As a side benefit to its May 27 purchase of StarTex Power, Constellation Energy Group is now the official naming sponsor of the Sugar Land Skeeters’ new minor league baseball stadium in Texas.

The Sugar Land City Council on Tuesday approved the name change of StarTex Power Field to Constellation Field, reflecting the change in ownership for Houston-based StarTex. Constellation agreed to buy StarTex Power, a retail electric provider with approximately 170,000 customers, in May for $142.5 million.

“Constellation’s merger with StarTex enhances an already strong partnership,” said Matt O’Brien, President of the Sugar Land Skeeters. “Adding more resources and community initiatives while maintaining local relationships will only bring greater good for Skeeters baseball and the entire Sugar Land community.”

The Skeeters, an expansion team debuting in April, will play in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball, a minor league system not affiliated with Major League Baseball. The team will be the first in the league not located in the Mid-Atlantic. (The Southern Maryland Blue Crabs of Waldorf and Lancaster (Pa.) Barnstormers are also in the league.)

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The latest entrant in the deal-of-the-day websites targeting Baltimore kicked off today in the form of Google Offers.

The search giant, which had tried to buy Groupon, launched its beta Offers program today for Baltimore. It joins skads of others including, of course Groupon, but also Living Social and local deal site Chewpons.com.

Google’s inaugural offer? Thirty dollars in drinks and fare at Blue Hill Tavern in Highlandtown for $15.

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By now everyone has given their opinion about the football uniforms the University of Maryland unveiled Monday night during their season-opening win against Miami.

Paul Lukas, an authority on uniforms, wrote on ESPN.com the Terps were in “court jester” mode and looked like “living chess pieces.” An athletic department spokesman told the New York Daily News the design is a “branding thing,” while an Under Armour spokesman said they were a way to “define Maryland pride and to differentiate.”

“Maryland Pride,” perhaps not-so-coincidentally, is also the title of a one-minute video the Terps were reportedly shown before receiving the uniforms last night. I was ready to put on cleats as a narrator described the Compfit Pride Jersey, “tight where it needs to be, no drag, no grab, more flex.”

You can see the ad below, which Under Amour also posted on YouTube last night. (Lukas and others reported receiving a press release about the uniforms right around kickoff time.)

Love them or hate them, the uniforms “accomplished exactly what they want to do,” Stewart Mandel, a college football writer for SportsIllustrated.com, told the Daily News.

“For three hours last night, everyone was talking about Maryland football,” he said. “When’s the last time anyone talked about Maryland football?”

All of this means one thing to this College Park alum: I can’t wait to see which of the 32 uniform combinations the Terps break out for their next game, Sept. 17 against West Virginia.

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University of Maryland Medical Center is starting a new advertising campaign, called “Medicine on a Mission.”

If you check out their website, you’ll see the new campaign. On the right side of the page click on the links under the video player to watch the television commercials, listen to the radio advertisements, and see the print advertisement.

The ads will begin airing on TV, radio and appearing in print next week. They all carry the new logo that was rolled out a few weeks ago, and they all drive individuals to our web site for more information.  The site contains more than 500 videos featuring patient stories, interviews with faculty and staff, and in-depth consumer health information.

The campaign is targeting the entire state of Maryland with some national reach, to raise awareness and build the reputation of the University of Maryland Medical Center as an academic medical center that delivers complex medical care in a personal way.

According to hospital executives in a release, “reputation is also important in attracting the best and the brightest employees, enhancing physician recruitment and strengthening our relationship with referring physicians that trust us with their most difficult cases.”

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Actress Betty White has become even more spectacular in her golden years.

To show for it, she teamed up with AARP to tell other older Americans to “get over” the idea of getting over the hill. Golden Girl White will be in broadcast ads and online videos that encourages people to get rid of stereotypes about aging. I’m pretty sure nobody better could have been picked for this campaign.

White’s ascension to being a cultural staple — winning six Emmy awards through her roles on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Golden Girls and even Saturday Night Live, all happened after turning 50.

“I think age is what you make of it — just look at me!” White said in a statement. “I’m going to hang out as long as anybody will pay attention.”

If White could easily get me to buy a Snickers bar with this commercial, I’ll be okay with turning 50 in another couple of decades.

Check out AARP’s “get over it” ad featuring Betty White below:

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Coordinating with this Saturday’s royal Baltimore wedding of National Bohemian Beer’s Natty Boh and Utz Snacks’ Miss Salie Utz, is a 30-second animated TV spot made for Smyth Jewelers that tells the story of how the two met. For a sneak peak of the commercial, it’s already posted on the MGH YouTube page.

The MGH created spot might even make you ditch watching “The Notebook” for the 100,000th time this weekend.

Watch the video below:

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This Saturday, Natty Boh and Miss Salie Utz are getting hitched. Or chipped. Or whatever chips and beer do together.

You may have seen the billboard on the JFX. Natty Boh, mascot of National Bohemian Beer, proposed to Miss Salie Utz, of Utz Snacks fame, in 2007. Four years later the two are finally getting married.

I asked a spokeswoman for the couple what took them so long, but she said the couple has no comment at this point.

And of course, in classic celebrity style the two will make it a public wedding. The publicity stunt will be held at Power Plant Live! at noon Saturday to kickoff Smyth Jeweler’s new TV ad featuring the pair of Baltimore icons.

The whole shebang is put together by MGH, which created the original pairing of the two icons when it posted the billboard for Smyth four years ago.

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And so we are left, 24 hours after he was unleashed, to ponder Kegasus.

The half-man, half-horse centaur, the manimal who rips holes in the fabric of awesomeness, has undoubtedly done what Preakness InfieldFest organizers wanted — generated buzz.

And any buzz (pardon the pun) is good buzz, I suppose, if your intent is to cut through the clutter of today’s media landscape. If Charlie Sheen has taught us anything, it’s that it helps to be outlandish when you’re screaming for attention in a multi-platform world.

And who needs tiger blood and Adonis DNA when you have four hooves, a beer gut and a nipple ring? Winning.

That said, what do we make of Kegasus — who reminds me of Gibby Haynes — strictly as a marketing vehicle, mythical or otherwise?

As this story in the Sun points out, it does speak to what most consider to be the Preakness infield’s key demographic. Think dudes in their 20s who wouldn’t know a furlong from a beer bong and no doubt long for the days of “The Running of the Urinals” at Pimlico.

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AOL was all over the news Monday for its $315 million purchase of the Huffington Post, a move analysts are calling a bold bet on CEO Tim Armstrong’s strategy to transform the dial-up Internet giant into a Web 2.0 (or are we in 3.0?) content king.

More interesting to me is this report in Ad Age Sunday about AOL subsidiary Advertising.com. The Baltimore online advertising company — a cornerstone of the region’s high-tech economy coming out of the Internet bust of 2000 — is said to be in “rapid decline.”

Revenue was down 43 percent in the fourth quarter, Ad Age reported. The decline was attributed by analysts to shifts in the online advertising industry, away from buying and selling ads via an ad network to doing this with an ad exchange.

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Last week’s list of the five most-read business stories by Daily Record staffers was topped by the latest twist in the Cafe Hon contretemps. Also cracking the list was a local reverberation of the auto industry’s troubles in Detroit, and the latest push to get Maryland’s horse racing industry on the right track.

1. Cafe Hon’s Whiting apologizes for ‘hon’ trademark controversy
Denise Whiting did not apologize for getting a trademark on the word “hon,” and did not say she planned to drop the legal protection she has on the well-known Baltimore term of endearment, Ben Mook reported. Instead, she said she was sorry for comments she made to the media that led to confusion that the trademark would limit people’s right to use the term in conversation.

2. Baltimore Travel Plaza bus terminal could become conference center
After years of declining business despite its proximity to Interstate 95, the multi-bay bus terminal at the Baltimore Travel Plaza will close for good, according to the story by Melody Simmons.

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