March Madness erupted today, with 16 NCAA tournament games played, including UCLA’s controversial victory over SMU, but this is what I took away from that game:

It was played in the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville.

The KFC Yum! Center has to be very near the top of “most embarrassing/ridiculous” branded names of a major sports facility in North America.

It exists because “fast-food giant” Yum! Brands, Inc. paid $13.5 million to be the naming sponsor for Louisville’s new (in 2010) arena.

And I had lived in blessed ignorance of that horrible name, until tonight, because I left the country most of a year before Yum! bought it’s way into the arena.

In this slide show of “nine worst corporate stadium names”, KFC Yum! Center ranks No. 5.

Here are the others (some of which later disappeared from the stadiums), if you don’t want to click through the above link:

1. Enron Field (Houston).

2. Northeast Delta Dental Stadium (Manchester New Hampshire).

3. Save-on-Foods memorial Center (Vancouver).

4. Amway Center (Orlando) … Amway hasn’t gone away yet?

6. Overstock.com Coliseum (Oakland)

7. Citi Field (New York).

8. Candlestick/3Com/Monster Park (San Francisco) — which is all history, because the demolition of The Stick is due to be completed this month .

9. Whataburger Field (Corpus Christi).

The KFC Yum! Center is underrated, in my humble opinion. OK, Enron beats them, but the rest? They are just awkward. None include an exclamation mark. None include the modern name for Kentucky Fried Chicken, which is a particularly fattening form of fast food that is very popular, also here in the UAE, and may bear a fair share of blame for the high rates of obesity and diabetes among Emiratis.

(For more awkwardness, check the video at the Louisville Courier-Journal in which everyone attempts to be happy that Yum! is giving them $13.5 million.)

If you would enjoy a chuckle over the way purveyors of fast food attempt to make it “not such a bad thing” … check the Yum! website.

My favorite bit, so far, is the company slogan about their aim to become The Defining Local Company that Feeds the World.

In part that seems to come from their “restaurants” (which include Pizza Hut and Taco Bell) giving “10 million pounds of food annually” to groups in the U.S.

Do you think Yum! is sending fruit and vegetables to poor people? Or might it be what’s left of that night’s fried chicken/pizza/burritos?

Anyway. KFC Yum! Center. omg.

I feel so bad for you, Louisville.