Just noticed this on the Northestern athletic website, in the release announcing Borovich hiring...

"EVANSTON, Ill. — Jon Borovich has joined the Northwestern men's basketball program as an assistant coach, Sullivan-Ubben Head Men's Basketball Coach Chris Collins announced Thursday."

Also noticed recently that in official releases Notre Dame wbb coach is called "Karen & Kevin Keyes head coach Muffet McGraw."

Is selling "naming rights" to coaches' titles a new thing now? Or is it some kind of honorarium?

Naming rights are becoming very popular for head coaches in a variety of college sports. Any of us can setup an endowment which requires millions of big bucks for our name to be attach to the head coach. Your endowment will help fund the salary of the coach. Naming rights originally started with the old money in the Ivy League.

At NIU, we are very lucky to have a lot of slots open for naming rights. I believe all our head coaches need naming rights. We even have a "new" dorm, football stadium and basketball center that are looking for naming rights.

I'm aware of naming rights opportunities; this apparent trend just struck me as odd since I never paid attention to it before.

I do think it sounds pretty silly, though, when a game announcer on tv says "this touchdown was brought to you by ..." or "your Itchy Scratchy Underarm Deoderant and Foot Powder three-point shot makes the score ..."

On a serious note, if I had big bucks I'd buy something (not necessarily change the name) just to throw some more dough at NIU sports. Maybe to protect the name.

Would be great if NIU could find a way to draw more interest in those opportunities.