Sponsorships

Ours is a sponsorship society. Brands attach themselves to events, among other things, and pay for the opportunity. And the events use the funds for their purposes. In golf there's the AT&T Championship - what used to be called the Bing Crosby Pro-Am and Clambake - held at Pebble Beach and several surrounding courses in the Monterey area. NASCAR has Nextel and the Coca-Cola 500. And so on.

Pebble Beach is one of America's most famous and beautiful places, and it's often a site for a competition, an outing or event. For instance, this coming weekend there's a Senior, er, "Champion's Tour" event here benefiting The First Tee, the PGA Tour's and others' junior golf initiative. The name sponsor is Wal-Mart. The name of the event is the "Wal-Mart First Tee Open at Pebble Beach" (that's a mouthful). The problem comes when the Tour adds its sponsors. Let me show you:

So what you have is an event benefiting junior golf, and brought to you, in part, by a drug that corrects erectile disfunction. Oh, well.