Franchise Notes

With AEG selling the MetroStars to Red Bull, which renamed the team the New York Red Bulls, ESPNSOCCERNET.com’s Ives Galarcep wrote, “MetroStars fans should start considering the benefits of going from being one of the five children in AEG’s crowded stable of MLS teams to being the lone American child of a company eager to put its stamp on the New York market. AEG spent the first three years of its ownership of the Metros basically ignoring the club before finally admitting its shortcoming and promising to do better. Is this really the owner MetroStars fans are so sad to see go?” (ESPNSOCCERNET.com, 3/10). AOL Sports columnist Roy Johnson said the “day is quickly ending when we don’t see corporate marketing creeping onto the field, just as it’s been in NASCAR” (“Street Signs,” CNBC, 3/10). Meanwhile, with many people in New Jersey upset that Red Bull plans to remove the state’s name from the brand, a Newark STAR-LEDGER editorial stated, “Red Bull needs to wake up and smell the caffeine. ... [A team that gets] public dollars, and that has been nurtured here its entire life, should use New Jersey’s name” (Newark STAR-LEDGER, 3/11).

BROWN OUT: In Boston, Jerome Solomon noted the Browns’ Web site on Friday night posted a story “claiming the team had made an ‘immediate splash’ in free agency” by signing free agent WR David Givens. While the Browns “had yet to comment as of early [Saturday] evening, apparently someone with access to the team’s site inadvertently posted the story as fact though the information in it had been gathered only as research” (BOSTON GLOBE, 3/12). As of presstime, Givens was still an unsigned free agent (THE DAILY).

DOG DAYS: The first-year ABA Florida Pit Bulls qualified for the league’s playoffs but are not participating. ABA Commissioner Joe Newman said that he “suspended the Pit Bulls from the playoffs” because the team’s coach, GM and co-Owner Tim Hardaway “did not attend the Pit Bulls’ final two regular-season road games.” But Pit Bulls co-Owner Demetrius Ford said that it was the “team’s decision not to participate in the playoffs because the Pit Bulls have applied to play” in the NBA Development League next season (Barry Jackson, MIAMI HERALD, 3/12).