In the modern world of college athletics, universities across the country are always looking for ways to bring in revenue to help enhance its athletic programs.
One way of doing this is selling the rights to stadium names, an avenue that North Carolina is exploring.
At a UNC Board of Trustees committee meeting on Wednesday, Rick Barakat, the new chief revenue officer for the school’s athletic department, stated that the process to sell naming rights to Kenan Stadium has begun. In Brian Murphy of WRAL's report, it was also announced that the university has hired Independent Sports and Entertainment (ISE) to lead the sale of the naming rights.
Kenan Stadium is named after William Rand Kenan Jr., the individual who donated the stadium back in 1927 as a memorial to his parents. One provisions of the sale for the university is to keep Kenan as part of the title of the stadium.
North Carolina is considering a variety of revenue-generating ideas and concepts, as the football program (under Bill Belichick's direction) has drawn a lot of attention and could drastically benefit the university in this effort. The Tar Heels are not alone, as schools across the country are looking to find ways to gain an advantage by coming up with ideas that help bring in more funding to support their athletic programs.
While changing the name of Kenan Stadium will be weird, it's good to see that the university is focused on keeping Kenan as part of the name (regardless of who the rights are sold to). At this point, you just hope that it's not an extremely weird name, as we all hope the new stadium name has a nice ring to it.
No, the new stadium name won't involve Jordon Hudson (at least we hope it doesn't...).