It's not often I get to report on anything sports related here on Freightdawg.com. Kevin Scarbinsky is a sportswriter for the Birmingham News. He writes mostly about the never ending saga of Auburn and Alabama football (which is why I read him). This week however, Scarbinsky had a very interesting article about the University of Memphis basketball team. It seems that FedEx is a major sponsor of the hometown university sports program.
FedEx sponsors many NCAA sports programs, but takes great care of the hometown team. In homage to the great purple beast, somebody at Memphis decided that for one game, the basketball Tigers would change their uniforms from their normal blue and silver to orange and purple. This was to have been last Wednesday when the Tigers played SMU.
Now this seems politically savvy when a major local corporation puts big bucks into your mid-major university sports program. How else to get Fred Smith's marketing team to invest more shekels into sports advertising while laying off folks and taking mandatory pay cuts? Somebody thought the wiser of it though. According to Scarbinsky, the U of M alumni and fan base complained bitterly to the Athletic department leadership, who promptly caved in.
According to Memphis BBall coach Mike Davis, nobody complains about FedEx's money, but changing the uniforms was another matter. Davis did say that if FedEx ponied up a couple of million dollars, then the Tigers would wear those purple and orange uniforms!
Eric
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