What is the Super ****

If the NFL and their band of lawyers have their way, someday in the future the Super Bowl will be anything but super.

The problem? The NFL doesn’t want anyone saying the term Super Bowl unless you pay them huge royalties. Of Course, right now the ruling only applies to advertising media and not news or editorial content. However, it has and will also be challenged in all forms of media.

Since the Super Bowl has become such a big event, the NFL has decided that there are too many people trying to ride on their coat tails and make money on their event. If you ask me, the more people that talk about and promote their event, makes it even bigger and better. You can’t beat free promotion.

What the NFL has attacked in the past 10 years are the big companies like electronic stores that advertise things like “Super Bowl sales” or car companies that advertise “Super Bowl Blowouts.” With the laws that are in place and re-enforcements by lawsuits these are now illegal to use.

Lately though, the NFL lawyers are going after the little guys as well. The NFL has officially sued a bar in Detroit for advertising a Super Bowl party at it’s venue saying it is a copyright infringement.

At the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas, the NFL gestapo forced them to stop advertising a Super Bowl party in the hotel’s bars. But it didn’t stop there, they even prevented them from showing the event on their big screen televisions last year saying they were too big. The NFL officially said that the casino is violating their telecast copyright. Instead, the hotel was forced to display the game on smaller tv’s throughout the venue.

I can understand the NFL protecting their properties and preventing ambush marketing campaigns such as the “official” tactic. That is when a product or service is advertised as the “Official Cell Phone of the Super Bowl” or something similar. But when a shared promotion is advertised that benefits both parties, I think it has gone too far.

When someone advertises a special like “Get a new big screen tv just in time for the Super Bowl,” it not only advertises the television, it also advertises the Super Bowl event itself. When a bar advertises a “Super Bowl Party,” people will come in and not only watch the game, but also watch the commercials during the game (which the NFL is charging $2.7 Million for 30 seconds). I think it is a win for both.

I can see that sometime in the future, if the NFL is successful on their current track, everyone will eventually forget about the game altogether since we won’t be able to talk about it.

Here are a few things you can’t say or print in regard to the Super Bowl and advertising right now:

• Super Bowl - in any form
• Super Sunday
• NFL, AFC or NFC or the same spelled out
• National Football League
• Team names

What you can say or print:
• The Big Game - (this is currently being challenged by the NFL)
• The Professional Football Championship Game in Arizona
• You can say the names of the cities that are competing, but not the team names.
• You are also allowed to bleep out the name of the event.

It’s not just the NFL that is going after possible infringements. Recently, a Ford Motor Company attorney stopped a local Mustang club from putting together their own calender with pictures of their own Mustangs. Ford now claims that they hold the exclusive rights to any image depicting a Ford vehicle. Does this mean that Ford officially has the right to prevent you from printing out a picture of your own car?

While I am a big proponent of copyright protection, we have to ask ourselves how far does it go and how far are we willing to let corporate giants run our lives.