King Kaufman's Sports Daily
NFL wants to trademark "Big Game." Good luck getting advertisers to stop piggybacking on the Super Bowl. Plus: Duke-UNC blood.
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March 5, 2007 | The National Football League, in an effort to protect its valuable commercial rights as well as its reputation as the biggest corporate bully in sports, is attempting to trademark the phrase "the Big Game."
This just in: The NFL plans to try to trademark the phrase "corporate bully."
The league filed a trademark application for "the Big Game" in February 2006, and that action was posted for public comment last month. A number of companies, including Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, have asked for time to file a formal objection.
The NFL wants to stop the practice of marketers piggybacking on the popularity of the Super Bowl without paying for the privilege, a gambit accomplished by referring to the big game as "the Big Game." Super Bowl week advertising is routinely filled with exhortations for fans to buy everything from chips and salsa to flat-screen TVs "for the Big Game."
The NFL is famously not shy about protecting its rights. This is a league that this year sent a cease-and-desist letter to a church that had planned a Super Bowl-watching party. Have to pony up for the rights if you want to get a big group together to watch the Super Bowl. Er, the Big Game. I mean, uh, the championship contest.
Stanford and California, the two Bay Area universities whose annual rivalry football game has been known as "the Big Game" for more than 100 years, are among those who are considering a formal objection, though the NFL has said it has no interest in messing with college traditions, only in keeping advertisers from associating themselves with the Super Bowl without paying rights fees.
Full disclosure: This column graduated from Cal, twice. It has no particular interest in the university's trademark battles but just wants to mention at this point that Stanford is a nasty little place.
This column, already a vigorous defender of its trademark on the phrase "What the Heck™," plans to apply for a trademark on the phrase "this column." And maybe "full disclosure."
More full disclosure™: This column™ is not a lawyer. This column isn't even a smart nonlawyer. It's just sort of a boob, to be honest. (Note to self: Initiate trademark search on the phrase "sort of a boob.")
But doesn't it also seem to you that the NFL is pushing a really dumb rock up a really big hill here, with little payoff at the really silly top?
Let's say the league is able to get a trademark on the Big Game. It doesn't take a lot of imagination for marketers to get around that obstacle, and if there's one thing in this world we can all count on, it's an industry with something to sell using its imagination to get around an obstacle to selling it.