I just happened to run across this quite old thread while Googling for some other stuff and thought I'd clarify my position just to get it out there in public; it's surprising how often issues of naming come up and how passionate some people become about it. I won't get into motives or amateur psychoanalysis, since they don't matter here, but I'll explain why I do what I do.
I have two basic rules about what name I use; if the two conflict, the second rule takes precedence. The first rule is that schools have a right to be called what they want to, within the bounds of disambiguating everyone. The second is that the athletic department does not get to decide what the school is called.
The first rule means that I'm fine with switching from "Cal Irvine" to "UC Irvine" or from "IUPU-Fort Wayne" to "IPFW" at their request (or from "Kent State" to "Kent" and back to "Kent State"). The second means that I'm sticking with "Texas Christian", "Central Florida", and "North Carolina-Charlotte" rather than the shorter versions that the MBA's in athletic marketing would prefer.
In this particular case, if you go to either www.ull.edu or www.ragincajuns.com, you'll see that they're referring to themselves including Lafayette as part of the name; it seems that this particular movement is more within the fan base than the school itself.
Boyd Nation