Sep. 4—What's in a name?
It means more to some than it does to others. After all, I don't seem to know how to spell my first or last name. This results in merely my own private misery, such as being called Geee-OFF by coffee shop baristas or receiving snarky emails pointing out I can neither spell nor use grammar properly.
For college athletic departments like the University of New Mexico or New Mexico State University, getting their name, or their brand, right is a little more important.
Nevertheless, the Lobos and Aggies regularly suffer in their own, two-institution misery as national news outlets regularly get the two mixed up, screwing up their names, logos, colors and just generally not caring enough to properly differentiate the two — leading fans to use the all-too-familiar social media hashtag #UNMSU to point out the mishaps.
Saturday, while millions of fans tuned in to watch the first full day of college football, the world's largest sports media company, ESPN, pulled off a rare one-day trifecta with three, very distinct and separate cases of #UNMSU:
—During the live airing of ESPN's College GameDay, one of the network's marquee programs in which an average of 2.5 million viewers tuned in, ESPN placed the NMSU logo on a graphic referring to that night's UNM at Arizona game, then repeated the error later in the broadcast, all while rabid Lobo fan Valerie Flores, a Texas resident who traveled to the Texas A&M campus for the show, was waving her familiar bright red Lobo flag and yellow New Mexico state flag in the background.
—During the UNM at Arizona game, ESPN mistakenly aired a commercial for NMSU at halftime instead of the contractually agreed upon commercial for UNM (which did run later after the error was brought to the production team's attention).
—In an article on ESPN.com wrapping up the day of games, a jersey shipping snafu by the Lobos was repeatedly referred to as an issue with New Mexico State — an error that remained unfixed as of late Wednesday.
That trio of mishaps is one thing, but even more impressive considering both the Lobos and Aggies were actually playing games on ESPN that day — UNM at Arizona on ESPN and NMSU hosting Southeast Missouri State in a game streamed on ESPN+ — and BOTH schools' next games are on ESPN channels.
College football TV rights are big business and airing games sometimes come with agreements to run commercials for the teams involved. In a contract signed in May 2021 regarding the UNM-Arizona football game, the clause 15.B.IV states: "The Host Party agrees to provide the visiting party with one 30-second message if the game is selected for a national broadcast network or national cable network telecast."
So what can be done? Schools certainly aren't going to pick a fight with ESPN.
"Our stance on it is basically that it's really irritating when that happens," said David Williams, UNM's interim athletic director. "There really isn't much recourse for it, though. They did run our ad eventually. ...
"We don't have any damages or anything like that, but what we hope can come out of this is to simply continue to make this point with ESPN — this is a frequent occurrence and we're going to use this opportunity to hopefully make them more aware of the issue."
Pinpointing a specific dollars and cents value for such errors is difficult to do.
"The damage caused by this (commercial) mix up, if any, is that it perpetuates the #UNMSU confusion and makes it difficult for the schools to differentiate themselves from each other," explained John Benavidez, principal lecturer in marketing with UNM's Anderson School of Management.
Benavidez noted that ESPN having a cost of anywhere between $45 and $250 CPM (cost per thousand) for air time, if the game had around 1 million viewers, the 30-second commercial could have an earned media value of between $100,000 and $200,000.
To be fair, UNM and NMSU don't always make it easy on folks outside state boundaries, each donning different shades of the same color. And neither has risen to national prominence in football ... ever.
Heck, even the ads ESPN screwed up weren't all that unique. The NMSU ad that aired at halftime ended with the slogan, "Be Bold. Shape the Future."
UNM Sports Information Director Frank Mercogliano's phone blew up about the mistake and he spent all of halftime arranging the right commercial to get on air, which it finally did with 8:03 remaining in the third quarter. UNM's ad aired and finished with the slogan, "Define your Future."
As much as fans of some schools who parachute into the #UNMSU world like to suggest this happens to other universities, too, the reality is it does not. Not at this rate. And even if it did, wouldn't that just make the matter worse?
In a vacuum, these #UNMSU mishaps are harmless.
Lobo Louie being sewn onto a pair of socks sold at Target a couple of years ago above the lettering "New Mexico State" can be laughed off. Former Lobos Elijah Brown and a few years later Jaelen House appearing on NCAA.com stories about the NMSU Aggie basketball teams going to the NCAA Tournament twice in recent years rises to a little more frustrating levels. Placing pictures of multiple UNM Lobo players on stories of NMSU's 2023 basketball season being shut down amid allegations of sexual assault and hazing is clearly beyond laugh-it-off levels.
Ultimately, it's an unfortunate reminder that ESPN — not the only perpetrator of the issue, but maybe the most blatant — and other national media don't often care enough about the Lobos or Aggies to differentiate between the two.
In the meantime, maybe both schools need to invest in finding more in fans like Valerie Flores to keep showing up around the country waving her school's colors and flag every chance she gets for all to see.
