Sports : MetLife Insurance Buys New Meadowlands Stadium Naming Rights

The New Meadowlands Stadium, which has gone by its awkward plain-jane name since opening last fall, has finally found a major company to buy the naming rights of the stadium: MetLife Insurance, which you probably know from its Snoopy-flying blimps above golf tournaments and other sporting events. The New York Post is reporting that the deal will bring in $20 million per year for the next 20 years. So for those keeping score at home, the Mets play at Citi Field, the Nets play will soon play at Barclay Center, and now the Jets and Giants will play at MetLife Stadium.

According to the Post:

MetLife bought one of four smaller rights deals, called cornerstone partnerships, three years ago for $7 million a year.

That deal was scheduled to run until 2014 -- but will end upon the anticipated announcement of the insurance company’s upgrade to a full stadium naming rights deal. ...

Sources said that MetLife and both teams have been trying to hash out a deal since last year but a volatile market has held up talks.

An announcement won't be made until next week (likely before the Jets-Giants pre-season game), but at least it's being announced well in advance of the 2014 Super Bowl, which is probably the real prize for MetLife.

The Baseball Stadium Turned Clunker Graveyard

Bush Stadium in downtown Indianapolis was built in 1931 as a field for Negro and minor-league baseball teams. Today, it's a historical relic holding hundreds of rusting vehicles traded under "cash for clunkers," a spooky memorial to waste.

If you're a fan of baseball movies, you've seen Bush Stadium; it stood in for Comiskey Park in the movie Eight Men Out. In its heyday, it resembled a minature Wrigley Field, with ivy-covered outfield walls and an Art Deco stone entry. Vacated in 1996, the city of Indianapolis let the structure rot, and rented its field for junkyards to park vehicles trashed in 2009 during cash for clunkers. More recent photos show the herd of thrashed vehicles has been thinned, but hundreds remain more than a year later, caught in a slow-motion race of decay from the elements.

Preservationists in Indianapolis have been trying for years to find some way of saving Bush Stadium, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. But despite several proposals, some as recently as October, it still appears likely that the stadium will go the way of the vehicles on its infield, scrapped before they had been used to their fullest.