Looking on the court of the Big East Tournament I was dismayed by what I saw. In big print letters on the court was an advertisement for Free Credit Report.com, I couldn’t believe it. Not even a reputable company like AT&T or Gatorade. That company has been known to do shady practices such as hiding the fact that they charge you $15 a month for you to see your credit score, so it’s not free at all.

I dread that this could become a big problem in the near future. You could see Nike, Verizon, Pepsi, Coca Cola, all sorts of shameless advertising right on the hard wood. I’m sure the advertisers were thinking what better ad spot than the court where players run back and fourth and the fans eyes are fixed on it the whole time.

Do we not have enough advertising between game breaks and right as we come back from break. The announcers even shamelessly promote TV shows from the same network during the game. They didn’t used to do that in the eighties and before. Heck, once I even saw Kobe drink a Sprite after winning the NBA Finals. Yeah, because Sprite really quenches your thirst, ludicrous! Sure Gatorade has carbs, but it also has lots of sugar and high fructose corn syrup to fatten you up. So the regular joe who drinks it has to work out like an NBA player just to stay in good shape. There really is not substitute for water, but there is vitamin water.

Nowadays you even have ads on the DVR menu screen. There are ads by the scorekeepers bench and the commentators. You know the banners next to the tournament logo where the players sub in to the game. There is plenty of advertising so we don’t need to ruin the reputation of the game by putting ad logos on the court. Eventually it might become like Nascar with ten different logos on the basketball court, how trashy would that look? Or are we going to have ad logos on the team’s jersey because the team owner is short on cash? Hopefully this was a one time event and the league doesn’t want to ruin it’s reputation by continuing down this road. Unfortunately usually in money deals with ad companies it is a slippery slope. Once you start giving out ad spots you rarely go back and remove them.