Baseball, Sports

Cooley Law School Stadium: The House That Broken Dreams Built

The full scoop on the only ballpark we know of named after a law school.

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Last week it came to our attention that everyone’s favorite diploma mill law school, the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, has a baseball stadium.

Not that Cooley is fielding a team; it bought sponsorship rights for a pre-existing stadium, not unlike other fine academic institutions such as the University of Phoenix.

We did some digging and got the details on this ballpark.

For example, did you know it’s actually been rated the second-greatest ballpark in the country? That’s right. The Cooley rankings say so….

Amazingly I discovered Cooley stadium entirely by chance last week when drafting Non-Sequiturs. This was amazing because not an hour after I published that article, the words “Cooley Law School Stadium” were emblazoned on the TV I was watching. Last week, the Lansing Lugnuts, a Blue Jays farm club that plays in Cooley Law School Stadium, made an epic blunder that went viral and ended up on ESPN. Here’s the full video of their mistake, which came with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth:

Sponsored

Did you catch the problem? The runner on first decided to celebrate rather than get safely on second. Members of the other team — who were actually paying attention to the game — got the force out. D’oh!

The Lugnuts are the primary denizens of Cooley Law School Stadium, but Michigan State sometimes plays home games there, when they don’t want to use their usual home “I Didn’t Get Into Michigan, Again Stadium.”

Nestled in Lansing’s “Stadium District” (which, as an aside, reminds me of the Hammock Stores in the Hammock District of Cypress Creek in the greatest Simpsons episode of all time), the stadium began its life as Oldsmobile Park (subtitle: Not your father’s ballpark). Unfortunately, when GM discontinued Oldsmobile, the park had to find a new sponsor or suffer the indignity of having a stadium not named after some publicity-starved corporate interest. Thankfully, Cooley stepped up to the plate.

The sponsorship deal, inked in 2010, gave Cooley naming rights for 11 years, for $1,485,000. That’s actually a pretty good deal — only about $135,000 per year. While some might argue that Cooley should be discounting tuition rather than buying stadium naming rights, this really is a drop in the bucket, worth about $36 per student.

Sponsored

The decorative scheme of the stadium is pretty bland. I was hoping for some distinctive artwork. Like the giant bat exhaust pipe outside the old Yankee Stadium. I think a statue of Thomas Cooley convincing a homeless man to go to law school would really spruce up the joint.

Lansing Lugnuts’ Walk-Off Hit Negated By Base-Running Blunder (VIDEO) [Huffington Post]
Cooley Law School Stadium [Wikipedia]
Lansing Lugnuts to play 15th season in Cooley Law School Stadium [Lansing Lugnuts]

Earlier: Non-Sequiturs: 07.03.13
Law School: Slashing Class Size, Keeping Tuition High
Latest Cooley Law School Rankings Achieve New Heights of Intellectual Dishonesty
New Statue Appears To Involve Thomas Cooley Trying To Convince A Homeless Person To Go To Law School… Or Something

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