The aversion to using ULL

[Turbine]

"Don't use ULL, if they see the second L they might recognize it stands for Lafayette."

I see a lot of UL fans chased away from boards for wrong usage of the schools initials. I have done it myself so don't get me wrong -going back as far as 1980 and then 1984- as far as I am concerned University of Louisiana is the proper name. I don't like to see Lafayette on anything. I just don't get the aversion to the second "L" it's incognito, invisible, and indiscernible. This is especially true in light of how the University is being marketed presently city tag all OVER the place.

It has been confusing to say the least if you read any of the media guides the SID department seems as confused as I, don't call us this, call us this, this is OK as well, we are not this . . . . It reminds me of the old "Raymond J. Johnson, Jr" bit.

While everyone seems to have bought the party line hook line and sinker, that being no use of a second "L" the stance has never been clearly explained. If it hasn't been explained to me how could I explain it to others? An explanation would work much better than jumping on a good meaning new poster every time they don't tote the party line.

As far as I know there has never been an attempt either on ragincajuns.com, CajunsIllustrated, Victory Cajuns, CajunBasin, SwampTalk, cajunfield.com, RaginPagin.com or Delphi to explain why use of the second L offends more than use of the city tag spelled out. So I thought RaginPagin.com would be the first, and I am hoping someone with more insight than me can do the explaining.

I know deep down why it offends but it makes no sense in conjunction with the blatant use of the whole city name. It has resulted -simultaneously to the "no initial accepted" stance, the spelled out city tag is being forced down your eyeball at every turn- in other coaches simply referring to Louisiana as Lafayette.

What follows seems to be the end message being sent.

The State is tag good, use it if you can, but don't force yourself. Yes indeed the State tag good, but the incognito initial is better. However, the city tag is bad but go right ahead and use it at will. Yes indeed the city tag is bad, but whatever you do don't use the incognito initial.

Other than ULL is hard to say can someone explain why It is OK to hide the good L but not OK to hide the bad L?

[Swamp Hound]

Turbine, I posted a long time ago that I did not understand this either. I believe I used UAB as an example.

Before I start let me say that all who know me know I have been as much of an advocate of UL and Louisiana as anyone. I will let my record speak for itself. Back to UAB, I know that situation is very different from ours but with them using UAB you rarely ever hear them refered to as "Birmingham" only but since we continue to "follow the rules" and choose to use UL Lafayette instead of ULL we are constantly refered to as "Lafayette" only I think this is done for 3 reasons #1 people (including opposing coaches) know that it ||||es us off, #2 we are in the same conference with ULM which makes the outsider call us Lafayette and them Monroe, #3 back to the choice of Louisiana Là. People are lazy in their speech and do not care to say Louisiana Là so they drop part of the phrase. Why they choose to drop the UL instead of Lafayette see reasons #1 and #2. Since we are not "allowed" to use UL and/or Louisiana in press releases and the like we should have chose to insist on Louisiana Là or ULL be the reference. If this had been done from the start IMHO we would not have near the problem being called "Lafayette" as we do today. I feel like throwing up every time we are on TV because 9 times out of 10 we will get called 4 or 5 different things and most of the time it is Lafayette People _____ about the SID using ULL (on boxscores and etc... posted on ragincajuns.com) and I understand it makes no sense because they ask others not to use ULL but what are they suppose to use? Some say ULA, well I like that also but if we are going to use that we may as well go for it all (UL). I know I did not answer your question but that is because I do not know the answer. In my book Louisiana Là is a whole lot worse than Louisiana Là and/or ULL. If/or until the admin finally pushes the issue for our use of UL and Louisiana we will continue to be called "Lafayette" as long as UL Lafayette is given to the media as a choice for what we prefer to be called.

[ULTubaTom]

The reason why the University I think uses UL-Lafayette is because the UL stands alone. We want to become UL right, you will never do it if we use ULL it will not happen for us. Does Texas ever use UTA or Arkansas ever use UAF no they do not use that.
If you go to Arkansas or Texas you will see all over the place UT-Austin, or UA-Fayetteville, They simple do not use it as for all Universities that hold the city tag, like UCLA, and UC-Berkerly but California never uses UCB. People are calling us UL, because of UL-Lafayette, but if we use ULL then people would call us ULL. When ever ULM wins or does something good they chant ULM, but we chant UL because we do not use the city as a intitial. We are just held by the city tag by law. So it is not right because we are not ULL we are UL or UL-Lafayette. Thats why we use UL-Lafayette and not ULL. The University needs to pursue Louisiana to there upmost ability. I think UL-Lafayette makes us look more academic in my opinion. Why be discourage by other Universities, we are winning the battle. We only change our name 4 years ago and we are already making strides to become UL.
We are just UL-Lafayette by law and we are held to UL-Lafayette by the state, but I am telling you UL-Lafayette is the best way to be known as University of Louisiana. Whether you know it or not. Also if T.V stations are forced to put the UL-Lafayette and more people are likely to use UL. Even though stations like ESPN use Lafayette sometimes (which ____es me off). Nevada-Reno never uses UNR, but I promise you they use Nevada-Reno when it comes to academics or on letters. Nevada-Reno never called themselves UNR.

[Turbine]

Originally posted by ULTubaTom
The reason why the University I think uses UL-Lafayette is because the UL stands alone...

Sorry but the UL dos not stand alone, it stands in conjunction with Lafayette and in such a conjoined manner UL becomes unidentified, invisible and Lafayette becomes the recallable namesake.

[ULTubaTom]

Well if we used ULL people will identify us as ULL and not Louisiana. I really think that is why the university likes it as UL-Lafayette and I agree with the University on using UL-Lafayette. Many Universities use the city tag. UT-Austin,
UC-Berkerly, UNC-Greensboro,
UF-Gainsville. UI-Chicago, UN-Omaha, UA-Fayetteville, UNC-Chapel Hill etc. I've name some colleges in there that are not the main campus or the primary campus of there state and still spell out the city. All of these colleges do not use the city initial. I really think we should not either. UL-Lafayette to me is the best way. To me it sounds better then ULL. Unless you want to be known as ULL, and not Louisiana. If we never become known as UL I would rather be UL-Lafayette then ULL.

The University of Louisiana is in Lafayette hence the name UL-Lafayette in my opinion.

[ULTubaTom]

I think ULL would be giving up on the name Louisiana. would you rather our baseball caps and our T-shirts and football uniforms and basketball uniforms have ULL rather then UL-Lafayette?

[realitycajun]

Well folks, no matter how we slice it, we are and will always be know as UL-Lafayette. I see ABSOLUTELY NO shame in that! I still prefer the University of Southwestern Louisiana name as you can see in my post. Sorry to tick some of you off, but that is just my opinion. Kind of an old guy, if you know what I mean. I do think that we need to use the city tag behing the "ul" due to having another "ul" in this state. Oh well, such as life. I would go so far as to say we change our mascott back to bulldogs instead of this horrific "cajuns" name. I'll never forget the time ESPN interviewed on of the then USL bb players before the tourney began. Heck, now I cannot think of the year or players name. Either way, the kid, when asked "what is a cajun?", could not answer. He then proceeded to reply that he did not have a clue as to what a cajun was. NEVER did I feel so embarassed for the university as I did then.

P. S. I, personally like it when "ull" appear as one on the caps and or uni's. Again, just my opinion. I think we all take this "name ~~~~" a little bit to seriously! Time to let it die and move on. Besides us, ABSOLUTELY NO ONE CARES!!!

[Swamp Hound]

Originally posted by ULTubaTom
Unless you want to be known as ULL, and not Louisiana. If we never become known as UL I would rather be UL-Lafayette then ULL.

Tom, we are not known as Louisiana now except on our own boards. I guess we will have to agree to disagree on which of the 2 lame choices we have to choose from right now. I really do not like either one.

GEAUX UL!!!!!!!

[TuffGuy84]

I think this this is all rediculous, Personally, I think someone else can call the University whatever they want. For instance, some people say Mississippi, some say Ole Miss, whatever the fact, I call my school UL, if someone chooses to call themm ULL, UL-LOUISIANA -Lafayette, Hell they could call it Crapville School For The Dumb (CSFTD), I will still call it UL. I do think that as long as people understand what school your talking about when you say UL, youve won half of the battle.

Tuffguy

[ULTubaTom]

Yeah but if you look at the every major college they never use the city as a initial, The school does not use the city as an initial, for example academics, UT-Austin, practically we have the same logo they put the U inside the T and write austin at the bottom have you looked at Texas logo for academics. Also UC-Berekely they write out the city tag. We are doing the same thing. We do not want people to call us ULL we want to be known as UL-Lafayette, or Louisiana if we used ULL we will never have Louisiana.

We use the same UL-Lafayette for academics, as we use for sports, I promise you that if UL, really starts becoming UL, in academics we will be UL-Lafayette and not ULL. Even Texas or California uses there city tag. Sports they are known as Texas and California, but when it comes to academics UT-Austin and UC-Berekely, The University is making a statement I think, trying to get people not to use ULL but UL-Lafayette.

[bigearl]

would someone explain why we can't use UL or Louisiana in media releases?

[Turbine]

If Texas was forced to choose between UTA or UT-Austin they would have jumped on UTA in a heart beat. At least with UTA Alums would have a chance to explain what UT stood for. If UT-Austin was the norm we would all be calling them the Austin Longhorns.