There’s a peculiar art form thriving in the world of competitive bass fishing, and it’s not jig selection or knowing which dock holds a five-pounder. It’s tournament naming—specifically, the breathtaking ability of every bass fishing organization in America to cram roughly seventeen corporate sponsors into a single event title without collapsing the stage.

Take, for instance, the gloriously overwrought MLF “Knockout Round Match 1 at Bass Pro Shops Summit Cup Presented by Zenni.” By the time the announcer breathlessly finishes reading that, half the field has already hit their limit and the other half are wondering if maybe they should have, after all, invested another five grand in electronics. It’s not a title—it’s a filibuster. It should come with chapter breaks.

Bass events have perfected what might be called Sponsor Jenga: the delicate, wobbling stack of “presented by,” “powered by,” “supported in part by,” “endorsed spiritually by,” and “with additional consideration from” brands that may or may not have ever sold anything you’d bring near a lake. They’re going to have to provide larger trophies just to accommodate the plaque engraving. 

Of course, bass fishing isn’t alone in this corporate arms race. College football bowl games have been in clown mode for decades. We went from the Rose Bowl to the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, which still sounds like a week-old prank. Then there’s the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl—nothing says “elite athletic contest” like lawn equipment.

Yet the big leagues—NFL, NBA, MLB—have somehow resisted turning their championships into sponsored tongue twisters. The Super Bowl remains the Super Bowl, not “The Super Bowl Presented by Doritos, Powered by Budweiser, Brought to You by the Concept of Capitalism Itself.”

But imagine if they finally snapped and followed bass fishing’s lead.

Picture the NFL playoffs as tournament-style entitled events:

“The Wild Card Weekend Divisional Knockout Round at Ford Field Presented by Little Caesars Pizza, Powered by Gatorade, In Association with Microsoft Surface Tablets That Will Definitely Work This Time, We Swear.”

By the time Joe Buck finished that, the first quarter would be over and the kicker would be in traction.

The NFC Championship would become the “Conference Finals Trophy Match Sponsored by State Farm with Supplementary Funding from Bud Light and That One Pharmacist Still Curious About Aaron Rodgers’ Wellness Regimen.” The broadcast crew would need hydration breaks just to make it through the pregame.

At some point, we’ll need QR codes just to keep up. “Scan here for the complete sponsor list, sorted alphabetically, by contribution level, and by who complained loudest when they weren’t on the printed banner.”

But we can’t deny how we got here. All this madness traces back to Ray Scott and his genius idea to run bass tournaments the way the PGA and NASCAR ran theirs—“sponsored by” whoever would foot the bill. And it worked. 

It didn’t just work—it built an entire profession. It helped launch the modern bass industry, kept the tournament world spinning for fifty years, and even paid for more than one outdoors writer’s boat gas—including mine.

But the Great Title Race has reached the point where you need a decoder ring to figure out what the actual competition is. Is it a tournament? A festival? A fundraiser? A brand activation event? A multi-level marketing seminar disguised as a weigh-in?

Still, we know why it happens. Sponsorship money keeps the whole machine afloat. Without it, we’d be back to those Sunday afternoon “throw five bucks in the pot” events where the prize was bragging rights and your buddy’s uncle yelling at the weighmaster.

Still, it’s the world we live in, and bass fishing fans take it all in stride. We breathe deep, we listen patiently, and we appreciate the spectacle.

And with that ...

This column has been brought to you by Frank’s Smellicious Catfish Bait, Powered by Frank’s Scent-of-Anchovy Deodorant, In Association with Frank’s Super Power 55 Inch Forward Facing Sonar—“We Can Fry Em Before We Catch Em!”

— Frank Sargeant
Frankmako1@gmail.com