While the Vikings are still hoping to get a study bill passed in the state legislature's special session, other teams are getting big money for naming rights.

When the Metrodome was built, it was named after Minnesota Senator and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. At that time, other stadiums in the league had names like Candlestick Park, Three Rivers Stadium, Riverfront Stadium and the Orange Bowl.

Those days are long since gone and it seems like only a matter of time before the Vikings join the growing list of teams that abandon names of stadiums in search of money associated with naming rights.

A pair of stadium naming rights have been in the news this week. H.J. Heinz Co., known for its ketchup and the number 57 for its 57 varieties of products, spent $57 million to buy the naming rights to the new stadium in Pittsburgh. Meanwhile, the State Legislature of Louisiana has given the Saints the chance to acquire naming rights and the revenue from it for the Superdome. The Saints, like the Vikings, are currently in a stadium squabble with state officials. The Saints are looking for the State of Louisiana to pay for a $450 million retractable roof stadium, while the state is offering to pay $75 million in improvements to the Superdome while it studies ways of generating the money to build a new stadium.

In the past couple of years, the power of naming rights has taken center stage. Denver signed a deal to sell naming rights to its new stadium for $120 over 20 years, while Baltimore received $105 million for 20 years for naming its new stadium. However, both of them got blown away when the expansion Houston Texans sold its naming rights for a whopping $320 million over 32 years — the richest such deal in NFL history.

It seems like only a matter of time before Humphrey will have to take a step back and let his political legacy go the way of so many other old stadiums with new names. With the disparity in revenues between some teams and the Vikings growing larger every year, the chance to get $3-5 million or more a year in exchange for naming rights to the stadium may be what the Vikings need.

Unless Mike Lynn and the Twins have found a way to take that away from them, too.

FRIDAY NOTES
* Although talks had slowed over the past month or so, VU has been told that guard Corbin Lacina and the Vikings have agreed in principal to a one-year contract that will pay him $477,000 this season with incentives that could push it to $800,000. It could be signed within the next few days.
* The Vikings Children’s Fund, which helps raise money for several charities and children’s causes, awarded the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Minnesota a check for $275,000 for research this year. In the 23-year history of the VCF, it has awarded almost $5 million to worthy causes.