Just stop it already

This was a nice story I read over the weekend from the Flint (Michigan) Journal about Michigan native Mark Ingram's rookie season in New Orleans. What I thought was particularly nice about it was the clean, unassuming, factual way in which it referenced the stadium where Ingram plays his home games.

Mark Ingram said the hardest tackle he took this season was from Atlanta Falcons defensive end Ray Edwards, who Ingram said shook him up when he hit him on a run play.

“It is a difference as far as the hits now, and usually every time he gets hit, just like before, I’m a little uneasy,” Shonda Ingram said. “I wait for him to pop up, but it is a difference because the guys are real big and they’re grown men.”

The unease, however, has not kept his mother away from her son’s home games.

She still maintains her job at Northwestern High School as a general education social worker but has made it down to Louisiana for every one of her son’s home games at the Superdome.

Mark Ingram's mom comes to see her son play at the Superdome. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe we don't really need to name the building at all in that sentence but since we're writing about a landmark in a faraway city it helps to throw that in, I guess.

Meanwhile, this morning, I flip on the ole NOLA.com super special Saints page and find this headline.

New Orleans Saints beat Detroit 31-17 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome

What, why? Why do Times-Picayune/NOLA.com writers and editors continually feel obliged to pimp the Dome's naming rights sponsor even in places where its inclusion is burdensome to a phrase or, in this case, a distraction from the main point of a headline? As far as I can tell, they're under no specific obligation to do this unless Benz is paying them directly.