Saturday night was a historic evening for the city of Columbus as the Blue Jackets, the capital city’s first true major league sports franchise, took the ice for the first time in a regular season game.The night was magical. Players, fans and all involved saw the night as a spectacular success. The city showcased itself as a legitimate big league town, and took a big step toward moving from the Louisville/Memphis caliber of cities up toward the likes of Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Dallas. Columbus is a big league town.Congratulations to John H. McConnell, Dimon McFerson and all the other people responsible for both bringing the team to Columbus and also making the night a truly historic event.The night, however, was not without its problems.Before the game, the team showed videos about the history of the NHL and the story of how the Blue Jackets came to be. Both were very well done, and conveyed a sense of history. They put the evening’s importance in context and let everyone in attendence know that they were getting involved in something very special.Then, before the players were introduced to a standing-room-only crowd, the team took a moment to thank its “championship partners.” These were companies that donated obscene amounts of money to the team for the privlege of good seats and plenty of advertising.The video board, which just moments earlier had shown the likes of Maurice “Rocket” Richard, Bobby Orr and Mark Messier, showed the annoying little Pepsi girl, a series of GM vehicles driving down the road and other commercials. All this, mind you, during a truly historic and special moment.We are not naive enough to think that advertising and sports can ever be separate entities. With the ridiculous salaries paid to players and the cost of new arenas, corporate sponsorship is a permanent fixture on the sports scene.With that said, a tasteful thank-you to the partners would have been acceptable. Simply showing their logos on the video board could have sufficed. Instead the crowd’s excitement was stunted by images of Suburbans rolling down the road and a little girl dancing with Faith Hill.It’s good Columbus finally has a major league team, and we look forward to cheering for the Blue Jackets in upcoming seasons. It’s just sad that to get them here, the team’s ownership had to make a Joe Hardy-like deal with the Columbus corporate community.