There will now be United Airlines jokes during every USC home football game

Prepare for lots of “re-booked passes,” etc. etc.

United Airlines will pay $70 million over 15 years for the naming rights to the L.A. Coliseum, Sports Business Daily reports. It’s not clear how that revenue’s being shared and distributed, but what’s important for our purposes is that USC now plays at United Airlines Field. Or maybe it’s United Park, or United Field, or United Stadium, or United Field at the Los Angeles Coliseum, or whatever nomenclature gets slapped on it.

We’re not two months removed from United making international headlines when one of its passengers was beaten, bloodied, and dragged off one of its flights after he declined to leave an overbooked plane. United has deservedly gone through a PR crisis in the aftermath of that beating, even though the airline’s not in much real trouble at all. The company’s share price is higher than it was when it let that guy get dragged.

But United is probably now doomed to a lifetime of snarky tweets during USC football games, as well as Rams games until the city’s NFL team gets its own building. These jokes may not be funny, even when aimed at the airline and not the man they put through hell. I’ll probably make one of these jokes on at least two or three occasions.

United already has its name on at one major sports venue, the Bulls and Blackhawks’ United Center in Chicago. Have many jokes been made about that arena in the last five weeks? I’m not sure. Here’s one about nosebleed seats, but I don’t know the extent of the jokes. Maybe a Chicagoan can help us figure that one out.

We college football people are a rowdy bunch, though, and it is a virtual certainty that United jokes will become a fixture of Trojans games at the start of the season.

There are going to be jokes about a QB’s terrible pass getting “re-accommodated for a pick-six” and quips about a player taking two penalties in the same quarter getting “involuntary re-booked.” And if the Coliseum is sold out and down to standing-room-only admission, college football Twitter will descend into chaos.

USC will become the second Pac-12 school to play in an airline-named stadium. Washington’s venue in Seattle is “Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium.” The deal for those naming rights was $41 million over a decade, SBJ noted. This one’s pricier.