It seems a number of universities are trying hard to remake their names. Or maybe just verify their real ones.
That's not easy to do after decades of going one direction.
The University of Southern California started demanding a few years ago that it no longer be referred to as Southern Cal. That must have come as bad news to Keith Jackson. And though the Trojans have been loosely referred to as Southern Cal for decades, the media guide rather snippily pointed out that the school is named Southern California, or USC.
Calling it Southern Cal would be like calling North Carolina North Car, or Northern Arizona Northern Ar, or Southern Mississippi Southern Miss. (Wait, we still do that, don't we?)
Point made, nevertheless.
Still, Southern Cal, er, USC has decades of history behind its name. It's not derogatory. One might as well stop calling Connecticut UConn or Virginia UVA.
But USC isn't the only school with name issues. Miami of Ohio is now Miami University, not to be confused with the University of Miami. You'd think the Ohio Miami would be happy just to get mentioned. And that it would want to avoid confusion with the big-name Miami. Maybe not.
But one of the most baffling moves is Texas Christian University's emphasis that it be merely called TCU. No Texas. No Christian. No University. Just TCU, in the football media guide.
Others that changed names for one reason or another: Memphis (formerly Memphis State), Troy (formerly Troy State), Nevada (formerly Nevada-Reno).
But none of them are quite as annoying as Ohio State's insistence on calling itself THE Ohio State University. That's not a change,as far as I know, it's just a pretentious name in the first place.