Never mind whether Newcastle have sold out with their new stadium name. I'm more interested in the epic amount of syllables that have been squeezed in: there's a grand total of 13 in the (draws breath) sportsdirect.com @ St James's Park Stadium. Bloody hell, the Gettysburg Address wasn't much longer.
Part of me is reluctant to write anything about this. The branding experts behind this decision must have known there'd be an outcry and that no fan would ever use the ludicrous new name. They will also have known, though, that the more ridiculous they made it, the more it would become a talking point. So they surrounded "St James's Park" with some faddy lower-case letters and a dash of tautology (isn't a professional football team's park always accompanied by a stadium?) Then they rubbed their hands in anticipation of newspapers' mocking sports op-eds and the outrage-fuelled phone-ins. And there you go: how many of us are talking about a sports shop chain that only existed on the fringes of our consciousness last week?
The new name is not the result of some corporate numbskulls' incompetence, but a calculated attempt to get some leverage for a brand, precisely by reducing an iconic sporting venue to a laughing stock - and in doing so, flicking an even mightier two fingers to the Newcastle fans than some might have realised.