Pima County supervisors will vote Tuesday on a plan to fund marketing for the Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Presented By Gin and Juice by Dre and Snoop.

It’s a standard-issue expenditure of $27,500 to an outside organization but it gives me the chance to write “Snoop Dogg Arizona Bowl Presented By Gin and Juice by Dre and Snoop.”

This gives me a chance to gripe about what has for decades been an affront to me and all that is good and holy.

Give Snoop a bowl game? I love it. I love it so much. Yes. We’re spending “taxpayer money” on a bowl sponsored by a rich rapper. Even if the conspiracy-minded think he somehow gets a taste, better him than Wells Fargo.To be clear: It goes to the bowl committee. Not the dude.

Snoop Dogg’s involvement seems to clarify just how eager the power that be are to sell off bits and pieces of our community’s soul.

Yeah, this has been said before but I haven’t said it yet. The supervisors give me the right to say it now.

I’m not even a huge Snoop Dogg fan. Dre? More so. That’s not the point. America has have been throwing 30 pieces of silver at any multinational willing to write a check for a sports endeavor, and college sports are now practically the British Premier League. But at least the BPL is elite and some teams can even be kicked down to lower rungs of soccer.

I stopped counting the number of 2023-24 college bowl games when I
hit 40. That means the top 80 teams get bowl bids. Actually that’s not
true. Four other teams got bids last year for the terribly silly reason
that they were determined to be the four best college football teams in
the county.

Ohio University gets to go to one? Go Bobcats. Go Rex Scott (the supervisor hails from Athens, Ohio).

To me, corporate naming rights jumped the shark long before Jimmy Buffet renamed Dolphins Stadium after Landshark, nee Joe Robbie Stadium, which replaced the Orange Bowl.

Last year, the game at Arizona Stadium went by the name Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. The supervisors withdrew county funding in 2021 for this particular incarnation because of the trolling nature of the Bro types running the operation sponsoring the game. Renegade sports ranters get bowl games now?

If you ask me, things started going wrong in America when we renamed Candlestick Park “3Com Park.”

Candlestick Park was a storied piece of ground. Hallowed, one might say. It stood on right on Candlestick Point. Our sports venues had become places of local, regional, national and global legend. Boston Garden, Mile-High Stadium, the Los Angeles Forum. The Spectrum. Yeaaaaahhhh, that’s the stuff.

But not anymore. Now teams play at TD Gardens, Empower Field, the Kia Forum. At least I know what a Kia is. It’s a cheap Toyota. I get this happening in pro sports, kinda. Player salaries have mightily inflated. But college sports make less sense.

I don’t remember Joe Montana’s comback in the 1978 Cotton Bowl thinking “Know what would make this game better? If it were named after dog chow.”

Bowl games used to largely be named after fruits of the earth. The Cotton Bow, Rose Bowl, Citrus Bowl and, of course, the Copper Bowl and the Rose Bowl. Even the Fiesta Bowl fit that bill. Parties are a fruit of the earth, aren’t they?

Tucson got the Copper Bowl in 1991 and it kept the name until 1996. Copper has a timeless appeal. 

Then it became the Insight.com Bowl. Subsequently the name changing got borderline ridiculous as various incarnation were christened as the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl, the Cheez-It Bowl and now the Guaranteed Rate Bowl.

Imagine some former quarterback, years from now telling the grandkids, “I threw for 300 yards in the Cheez-It Bowl. They were these orange things … no … no … cheez with a ‘z’ and no ‘e.'”

The Copper Bowl (or whatever we call it) did what so many other Tucson sports ventures have done. It moved to Phoenix.

If we lose this bowl game, Tucson should name the next one the “Thirty Pieces of Silver Bowl.”

So what the county should do Tuesday is tell the rapper, “We’re not giving you a dime, unless you change the name to the Straight Up Snoop Dogg Bowl.”

Then at least, Tucson’s bowl game would be a running commentary on how we turned our cultural traditions into marketing gimmicks.

At least our highest bidder is freaking Snoop.

 Plus, Tucson is a dog town… or “Dogg” town if the price is right.

Anyway …

The reason I was able to go off on something gnawing at me for years is that the rest of the county supes agenda is pretty light. I’ll have a rundown of the coming week’s school district meetings in a day or two.

There are some school board elections the supervisors are ready to cancel for lack of competition.

Candidates running unopposed for town councils or county boards still must stand for election. School board candidates do not have to go through the motions.

So, congratulations Eric Krnzarich, Lonnie Gurthrie in Ajo. Way to go, Sarah King, Dan Tankersly and Martin Hudecek in Altar Valley. Attaboys go out to Ted Rodriquez, Beki Quintero and Edgar Bustamante in Sunnyside. Vicki Cox Golder, Patsy Harris and Deanna Day are all set remain on the Amphitheater Unified School District Governing Board. 

Nicole Barraza will sit on the Pima Community College District Governing Board.

They are among the winners in elections that won’t be held.

 The Precinct 4 constable position will again come up for a vote, as Supervisor Adelita Grijalva wants to reconsider a vote to not fill the vacant spot.

Tracy Ethridge-Nielsen submitted her name for the position and a background check was completed. Her education was what she said it was and she did work for employers she listed. The county Human Resources Department has not yet verified Nelson’s time of employment because she must sign a release for the county get that access.

She was the chief of police for the Pascua Yaqui tribe and worked there for 28 years. I’m not sure what the problem is because she hasn’t been hiding. She’s running unopposed to fill the seat though the board may finally decide to eliminate the Precinct 4 position.

Grijalva was among the four supervisors to vote against filling the position. Now she wants to ask the rest of the “ayes” to reconsider their votes.

Elections ‘questions’ or ‘here we go again’

Supervisor Steve Christy has asked the county recorder and elections director to address concerns voiced by residents during a July meeting.

Some speakers asked during a call to the audience last month about how the elections officials handled ballots and voter registration files.

I would have lead with this item and not the bowl rant, but we shouldn’t overemphasize the news value of allegations that have a history of being absolute B.S. (Are you reading New York Times?)

To the uninitiated, these complaints sound very specific and alarming. “Oh my God, the county violated 12 different statutes and eleventy procedures in administrative law.” Run things passed one second year law student and find out, “Uhhh. No they didn’t.”

Or the case was a minor incident that was corrected on the spot. Stand and watch every aspect of a McDonald’s shift as they deliver a hundred Big Macs and Happy Meals and 50 actions can be criticized or disputed. Maybe they do get an order wrong. The response isn’t to shut every McDonald’s down around the world or confiscate everybody’s McNuggets.

However, as a journalist, I also know that sometimes the “crazy” people have a point. I’ve won awards by listening to “crackpots” who present nuggets of gold as they focus on pyrite.

To whit: Apparently, sample ballots went out with declaring the date of the
primary election was August 30, not July 30. If I were a Democrat in Cochise County and the Republicans sent out Democratic sample ballots that said “vote a month after the election,” I’d be rip-roaring angry and think the fix was in.

There may be a very innocent explanation. And so the
people were asking during call to the audience for Recorder Gabriella
Cázares-Kelly and Elections Director Constance Hargrove to answer some
of their questions. There’s no harm in giving these concerned citizens a
chance to prove they are raising good faith concerns and not laying the
groundwork for a hostile takeover.

However, all should feel free to lose their sense of humor real quick if this seems like (and I suspect it is) laying the groundwork to justify overturning elections if the Democrats win. The goal may be to cause mischief that justifies chicanery in Congress or at the state Legislature. Then the courts would have to intervene.

Republicans in the last few elections cycles have defined election fraud as anything short of them being to declare the winner. The more they complain about the results. The more they seem just hostile to elections in general. Just put them in charge dammit — now and forever. Then we can have all the “elections we want.”

I think this comes with a lot of downside for the Republicans. At some point they look like whiny brats who will never take no for an answer. They could just try running on a popular agenda. Crazy, huh?

The supervisors will meet Monday to approve the primary canvas, which is the final vote total after the July 30 election.

County Administrator Jan Lesher has asked for the opportunity brief the board on county initiatives to address homelessness and public safety.

She provided no further information.

Normal accolades will not suffice

Allow me to end with another local institution. Supervisors are ready to proclaim Tuesday to be Daniel “El Guero Canelo”
Contreras Day.

What? The Presidential Medal of Freedom is too much to ask? No Nobel Prizes hanging around? The Lombardi Trophy is too far away?

This is El Guero Canelo, the Mexican eatery that is one of the better reasons to live in Tucson.

Sure, the restaurant won the James Beard award for Sonoran hot dogs. It’s just that normal culinary accolades fail to measure up the glory that is El Guero Canelo,.

God,
I love that place. The carne asada there is absolutely worth killing a
man to get. I do get them without beans. Get off me. This is America.
Everyone else is free to do it wrong.

I used to go to the
place on South 12th Ave and that’s the place to go to do it right. Then
again, if the option is not going at all, the North Side and East Side locations will do.

Please never let this be “The Quicken Loans El Guero Canelo.”