UB Bulls to Rebrand

Another day another borderline hit piece by Buffalo News sports opinion hatchet man Bob DiCesare. Typically I don't usually opine at the way the Buffalo News covers the Bulls because the coverage is usually pretty thin. So good or bad there was never enough interest from the News for me to care. The lack of coverage was so bad some no nothing Engineer 1000 miles from Buffalo started a blog.

For a short time Rodney McKissic was running the campus blog and he made into something worth reading, not going though a pay-wall mind you but still something with fair news coverage. DiCesare took over after McKissic and went right back to giving nominal, yet balanced, coverage to Buffalo.

Until Witherspoon was let go!

The decision to change coaches seems to have given DiCesare a case of journalistic rabies. And he really wants to bite into UB.

The coverage of the Witherspoon decision drew ire from a lot of Buffalo fans, even Conrad and I first approached it with quite a bit of skepticism. And I maintain to this day that, in my opinion, the right thing to do would have been to give Spoon one more year. That being said I can't completely deny the logic of bringing in a new coach after 14 years of without a conference title.

Then there was the Hurley comments about not counting on a MAC Championship next season. DiCesare went off about how such a failure would mean the coaching move was all for naught and would be a blemish to white.

What Bobby Hurley said was coach speak 101. You don't march into a new conference and scream youll be singing rocky top after beating a rival every year, it did not work out well for Kiffin and chances are it would not have worked out well for Hurley.

Now it seems Bob is turning his sights on White's rumored attempt to rebrand the University Athletics department.

On the rebranding:

Sources say that athletic director Danny White is agressively pursuing a rebranding of the department with the emphasis changing from Buffalo to New York. I'm told the iniative, as least as of now, stops short of a full-fledged name change but will accentuate the New York ties to leverage UB's status as the state system's flagship university. The project has been referred to from within the department as the "New York Bulls" initiative.

The final product, if implemented, could make waves within the region. It's difficult to emphsize "New York" without de-emphasizing "Buffalo." -- TBN

Having been a Buffalo kid who lived on campus at UB I can tell you for certain that there is usually friction between the upstate kids and the down state kids. I can also tell you that there are enough down state students that such a move by UB would be justified.

Yes the Native Buffalonian in me is stung, just a bit, but I'm old enough to know this is not a matter of UB emphasizing "Buffalo". This would be UB pointing out, rather proudly, that the biggest public athletic department in the State is in Buffalo. If doing that happens to bring some needed cash from the private sector that's just gravey on top.

The only risk would be major push back from the other centers or SUNY itself. Even there the risk is minimal so long as this is a department brandin and not a University rebranding initiative UB should not be stepping on any toes.

Side note - How is it that BD has so many sources in the department and I have none.... C'mon people you know the tip line email address ;)