Florida has FSU, East Florida State College and Florida State College at Jacksonville.
My theory – “The Ohio State University” is the legal name of the university for whatever reason that’s lost to history, and thus that’s the officially trademarked name. The official logo includes the T - H - E. So that’s the name, no big deal. But the official logo hardly shows up anywhere, especially outside of campus. Mostly you see the “block O,” which just says “Ohio State.”
As a freshman entering campus in the late '90s, I didn’t give 2 shits what the university was called outside of OSU or Ohio State. Then douchebags started asking me why we always insisted on calling it THE Ohio State University. Well how the fuck should I know, I’ve been there 3 months and I’ve never heard anyone call it that.
After a couple years of everyone asking me, I eventually started calling it THE Ohio State University, because people seemed to love the joke, or rather they loved being able to make fun of us for being such trademark snobs or something. And the only time I ever heard any other students or alums make a big deal about it was for essentially the same reason – because we were told that we make a big deal about it, so I guess we *should *just to make everyone happy.
I assure you nobody’s going around making sure that OSU is rightly placed above OU in the Ohio public college hierarchy via the use of a single grammatical article. OU’s well-deserved reputation as a dirty hippie party school in a backwards hick town does that for us.
/ducks and runs
I got a chuckle out of it when a local news sports reporter in Gainesville, FL started referring to it as “AN Ohio State University” with the same heavy emphasis on the indefinite article that the players give to the definite article. This was during the period when UF beat OSU in the championship games for football and basketball in rapid succession.
Shock won’t do it. You have to remove the head or destroy the brain.
t.u. is actually short for “Texas University”, which is deliberately chosen to tweak them by getting rid of the “The”, because the people in Austin are pretty snooty about using the “THE University of Texas” as if they’re the only one, or the only one that counts. Plus, they’re an urban, more or less liberal arts school in a pretty progressive city, while Texas A&M is predominantly an engineering, business, science and agriculture (the A&M originally stood for “Agricultural and Mechanical”) school set in rural Central Texas (albeit about 100 miles from Houston and a little more to Austin). Until the mid-1960s, A&M was an all-male military school, so that combined with the academic emphasis, location and general perceived backwardness gave the UT people a lot of ammunition to be snooty and superior about.
These days, the schools are probably more similar than different- they’re both huge state universities with Nobel laureates and other big-name academics on their faculties, with world-class programs at both schools. But the rivalry remains, even if the sports teams no longer play each other.
Chronos, there is Indiana University (IU) and Indiana State University (ISU).
I don’t mind “The State University” too much. What I find pretentious is “The University OF Blah Blah Blah.” That “of” bugs me.
According to the OSU library website, the first rendition of “The Ohio State University” dates back to 1878, when the trustees renamed it from “Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College” (too bad, that was really catchy).
Down through the years, it apparently was called Ohio State University by most people; then the university logo got redesigned:
“In 1986, a new University logo was introduced in the hopes of moving away from the “OSU” symbol, which had been used since 1977. The change from simply “OSU” was said to “reflect the national stature of the institution.” University officials wanted the institution to be known as “The Ohio State University,” again, since OSU could also mean Oregon State and Oklahoma State University.”
Yep, that makes a lot of sense. :dubious:
Occasionally I have to address job-related correspondence to TOSU, and I always put Ohio State University in the heading, just to piss off any pretentious nitwits who are capable of being pissed off over such silliness.
Aggies don’t refer to Texas as “tu” to stand for “The University” but Texas University, just another one in the state of Texas.
One of the universities I worked for covered this a college manual. They noted that the old records used both styles, with and without the “The”. They basically said that they didn’t care which you used. I kinda like that philosophy.