Lady Vols name change makes no sense, but that's UT
With the Nike-fication of all things Big Orange — PMS 151, for those wanting to be color-specific — July 1 is a significant date in the marketing campaign known as One Tennessee.
Upon further review, though, maybe it should be called All But One Tennessee.
Of the 18 intercollegiate men's and women's sports teams competing for the University of Tennessee, 17 are hereby called Vols. The women's golf team shares the same name as the football team.
But one team was left behind. The women's basketball program still carries the name Lady Vols.
Make sense? Of course not. Welcome to UT, where leadership is neither strong nor reasoned. I swear they're making things up as they go along.
In explaining the rationale behind the move, UT athletics director Dave Hart often has referenced the switch from Adidas to Nike as the major reason for all this renaming and rebranding. That's a reach.
Based on conversations with those who deal in the marketing and merchandising side of college sports, it's standard operating procedure in situations like this that Nike would offer a branding proposal that included a number of options. One of them was bringing all UT sports teams together under one Power-T logo rather than having separate logos for Vols and Lady Vols.
It was a suggestion — one possibility the university could consider. It was not a mandate delivered from Mount Swoosh.
But Hart embraced the idea. And when Hart embraces an idea, he expects it to turn into one big group hug. You're either along for the ride or thrown under the bus.
Personally, I never understood the need to go all Vol. While some believe including "lady" in the name of a women's college sports team is sexist, I never heard any of the young women competing for UT complain about it.
To the contrary, the term Lady Vols was its own brand. Those who played softball for UT took pride in being known as the Lady Vols just as the women's basketball players did.
But if you're taking the plunge, everybody should get into the water. The name of one women's team should not be grandfathered (or grandmothered?) in. If that's One Tennessee, so be it. It shouldn't be One Tennessee — Plus The Women's Basketball Team.
This makes no sense. In other words, it's in keeping with many administrative decisions made at UT over the past several years.
Once upon a time, the UT president's office was occupied by people such as Andy Holt, Ed Boling and Joe Johnson. They were comfortable on campus and off, meeting with faculty in the morning and socializing with alumni in the evening. Each was able to articulate his vision for the university without a press release generated by a bunch of flaks.
It's been a long time — too long — since UT had leadership like that. While current UT system president Joe DiPietro is not a public embarrassment like many before him (read: Wade Gilley, John Shumaker and John Petersen), he is seldom recognized outside the administration building.
That's why so many decisions are made in a virtual vacuum. A strong-willed athletics director such as Hart operates almost unchecked. When the Lady Vols issue came to a head, he essentially told the UT Board of Trustees to butt out. In four years, he has created a fiefdom that is the envy of others in his chosen profession.
UT-Knoxville chancellor Jimmy Cheek recently wrote a guest column for the Knoxville News Sentinel in which he tried to explain the rationale behind keeping the women's basketball team named Lady Vols while all other female teams fall under the heading of Vols.
And I quote:
"For those who have questioned our decision to stay with the Lady Vol logo for women's basketball, the answer is quite clear. It is a tribute to Pat Summitt, her eight national titles and her national legacy."
Nice try, chancellor. Invoking the sainted name of Pat Summitt is an attempt to play to the base. But it muddles the message. No one was more "One Tennessee" than Summitt. Before she was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, she was a visible, enthusiastic fan at football games. In 2007 she famously donned a cheerleader outfit in support of Bruce Pearl and his men's basketball team.
Likewise, she attended a number of competitions involving women's teams when she wasn't busy building Lady Vols basketball into a national power.
If Summitt's condition was different, I suspect she would tell Cheek and Hart what they could do with their rebranding scheme.
David Climer's columns appear on Wednesday, Friday, Sunday and Monday. Reach him at 615-259-8020 and on Twitter @DavidClimer.