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HAD a coffee with my mate on Saturday when our boys were playing football.

We were chatting about the usual stuff – telly programmes, our weekly donation to Ladbrokes and the state of the game in this country.

We got talking about sponsorship, or the lack of, in Scottish football and he came up with an idea that is so outlandish but so simple it might just work.

“See the SPFL,” he said. “They should give the sponsorship of the league away for nothing for the rest of the season to a really big company and then let them see the commercial benefits they’d get from it.

“Then at the end of the year, they could say to them, ‘We’ve proved our worth – now sponsor us for real’.”

That’s right, he would give the whole lot away for nothing. Let’s face it, that’s exactly what the league is getting at the moment, so what’s the difference?

The difference is at the end of the season the SPFL can measure every column inch of coverage that has a sponsor’s name on it.

It can count in minutes the television and radio exposure the brand would benefit from and the endless possibilities that exist in the digital world.

And they can then put a price on it.

There’s something strange about the fact the worldwide companies who are based in this country have rarely chosen to be associated with football in Scotland.

Why haven’t BP sponsored Aberdeen? An oil company, employing thousands in the north east, yet ignoring a club that is very much the heartbeat and the hub of that city.

Unless I’ve missed something they have little or nothing to do with the Dons.

The Royal Bank of Scotland, before its meltdown, was a pillar of this country’s financial community and poured millions into the likes of golf.

Yet, with its headquarters slap bang in the middle of Edinburgh it has refused to have anything to do with Hearts and Hibs.

(Image: Bill Murray/SNS Group)

You look at the Emirates Airlines and the millions they have ploughed into having their name on the magnificent sporting arena that now sits opposite Celtic Park.

This is a clearly a company which is not afraid to splash its cash in football – Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium anyone?

Emirates fly out of Glasgow Airport every day. Everyone knows their name and it is synonymous with comfort and class. So why won’t Emirates look across the road from the shiny new arena that boasts its name and use some of its surplus cash to be associated with Celtic?

Maybe they haven’t been asked, who knows?

What about Barclays Bank? They chuck money at the English Premier League, that behemoth of a football organisation whose shadow seems to make us cower in its shadow. “It’s so big and so brilliant,” we say. “And we’re crap in comparison.”

Well, it doesn’t have to be like that. Can’t we go banging on Barclays doors and start acting like noisy neighbours who have something to say for ourselves, rather than just meekly believing we are too small and insignificant for a bank like that to be interested in us.

Put it this way, they should be. There are five million of us and if they were prepared to sponsor our football they might just lose the image they have up here of being an English bank which has a few branch offices north of the border.

And if thousands of us start opening accounts on the back of the way we could promote their products through our national game, then surely that must be an attractive proposition.

Maybe that’s too simplistic. Maybe smarter folk than me will drive a bus through my arguments. Or maybe companies like those I’ve mentioned, or other global brands such as Pepsi or Coca Cola, don’t like the image that Scottish football projects.

If that’s the case let’s change the preconceptions.

Let’s try summer football. Don’t just sit there and think, “Nah, folk won’t like it”. Here’s some breaking news – folk don’t like what they’re getting right now. Decisions continue to bemuse on a weekly basis.

The latest? How about the Cowdenbeath-Hearts game, postponed at the weekend, rearranged for next Tuesday?

That’s right, a day before Christmas Eve, 30 hours before Santa starts showing off, we are asking football fans to travel in numbers to deepest and undoubtedly darkest Fife.

It’s a nonsense.

Clubs are beginning to wake up to the reality of the situation. Celtic should be applauded for allowing the unemployed free entry to their match against Ross County on December 27.

It’s a noble gesture and one they are able to do because they know their stadium will be half empty. So they’re trying to fill it, to create an atmosphere, a spectacle, and if 2015 is a better year for some of those men and women who are out of work they might just be able to buy tickets for future matches.

We need folk in our grounds. Without them the Scottish game looks to the outside world as if it is dying.

The outsiders don’t know most of us live and breathe football, even if we don’t go to games as much. They have no idea that it is the centre of discussion on every building site, every office, every school playground and every dinner table.

And if their companies were associated with it how could they not benefit?

Especially if they were getting it for nothing.

It might not be as daft as it sounds.