The definition of giant, swinging, I-don’t-give-a-sh*t-what-you-think balls: spending millions of dollars to sponsor College Bowl Games when you’re receiving handouts from the government. Anyone reading this should be pissed beyond belief that our dollars are being spent in order to make sure announcers can’t call it the Rose Bowl, but “The Rose Bowl Game Presented By Citi.”

There’s also the Capital One Bowl. Or the GMAC Bowl. The Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl brought to you by Bank of America. The EagleBank Bowl. And who could forget the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl sponsored by U.S. Bancorp. All sponsorships cost millions, and all from companies who screwed up so badly they had to take millions and billions out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Sufficiently furious yet?

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William Clay Ford and the Detroit Lions management finally got one move right. (No, they’ll probably still draft a bust wide receiver.[Actually, we probably can’t make that joke anymore, since Calvin Johnson is the truth.]) They’re bringing down ticket prices.

Considering fans have paid an average of infinity dollars per win this year, and the city of Detroit is being hit particularly hard by the recession, the Lions have announced that they won’t increase ticket prices next year, as is customary. In fact, they’ll actually bring prices down on eight percent of general admission seats. Considering there were more than 10,000 unsold tickets for their home finale last week, this is a sound business move, and will avoid a public relations disaster.

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It’s pretty clear that certain baseball teams who shall not be named are immune from the recession. But other sports with salary caps are starting to feel the crunch. Word around the league is that the NBA’s cap and luxury tax threshold will actually be lower next season, for the first time in the history of the league.

The two figures are at $58.68 and $71.15 million this season, and are based on the league’s basketball-related income. With attendance down, not to mention luxury boxes and merchandising, the hard and fast math means, according to the PORTLAND TRIBUNE, NBA teams could have more than a million dollar less to spend on the 2009-2010 season.

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If you needed more proof that the recession is cutting deep into sports sponsorship, here’s your sign: GM, the struggling car maker that needs any good media it can get, appears likely to end a decades long sponsorship of NASCAR’s greatest race, the Daytona 500. Yup, a car maker may stop sponsoring a car race. Pretty dismal.

(That’s not Jimmie Johnson en fuego … it’s GM rushing from Daytona.)

According to the DETROIT NEWS, the carmaker that has been the official car and truck provider of Daytona Speedway since the early 1970s is in talks about a new sponsorship deal to replace the current agreement that ends Dec. 31st. Yet there isn’t significant optimism about signing a new deal because of cash-strapped GM’s need to adhere to strict regulations in order to qualify for the federal funding they’ve been lobbying for over the past month as part of a financial bailout.

“We don’t comment about our business discussions,” GM spokeswoman Jan Thomas said.

If you thought that sounded ominous, listen to the quote from Daytona speedway spokesman Andrew Booth: “I know we’ve had some talks with them but right now, we are continuing to explore opportunities,” he said. “We don’t comment on our prospects.”

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As you may have heard, it will be a blue Christmas for more than 150 NFL employees, who will lose their jobs as part of some financial belt-tightening by the league in response to the recession. But that’s apparently not the only way the NFL is being impacted by the economy’s collapse. Paul Domowitch of the PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS says that some owners have floated the idea of selling ad space on jerseys, like in NASCAR or European soccer.

And NFL owners are so desperate for cash, that they apparently would be willing to let you put team logos on just about anything:

“This may be the one time you could get an NFL condom license,” said an executive for one of the league’s larger licensees. “If you’ll give them a $50,000 guarantee for 3 years, they’ll let you be a licensee.”

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