OK, this hacks me off. It is a subliminal way of belittling TU and in a minor way, the city and region. And its also a way you and I can tell just how loyal and respectful a person in the media is toward TU.

Now this is my opine and if someone from outside our relm of thinking read it, they might laugh, but then they aren't a TU fan to begin with. Its sort of a way of putting us in our place - a much milder version of using the "N" word and other derogatory remarks. I know this sounds minor, but disrespect in some circles is a minor violation. But if it is used in the media, it says more about the writer or the sportscaster than we immediately think IMO.

Well, its when they use the term "Tulsa" when they mean TU, but they use OU/OSU when they are speaking about the those schools. IMO Its used "generically" to refer to us by a name rather than intitials like the real "big boys", so to speak. And it also tends to confuse the common folks out there because Tulsa has the Drillers, Shock, Oilers etc.

What really gets me hot is when our own writers in the TW or the local broadcast media do this. They even will say something like "there is an OU game today and OSU plays tonight at home and later this week Tulsa plays SMU." Something like that. Here is what is never said, "Oklahoma University plays today, Oklahoma State plays tonight and TU later this week." The subliminal message would be completely reversed.

Well, why am I bringing this up, its because our own writer in the TW does this. Now he sometimes refers to TU as "TU' but ofter just calls us Tulsa. But I've almost never, ever heard him once say that OU is "Oklahoma" or that OSU is "Oklahoma State" in the same sentence as "TU". Now who does the guy cover, the ice oilers? Show us a little respect!

So here's what I'd like to see someday and if I wasn't so nice most of the time (well sometimes not), I'd do this. When someone out on the street says "Tulsa" when they mean "TU", just correct them this way - "Oh, you mean TU"? Sorry, but I always call TU, TU".

And just if you want to be coy, when someone says "OU" in the same sentence as "Tulsa", just ask them "you mean Oklahoma University?"

IMO.

PS. Lets keep an eye on the TW and local media for this and see when and how often it occurs.

Well, thats my rant for the day.

You don't understand.....didn't you know EVERYBODY knows who OU and OSU are but of course those people don't know who TU is.......I believe that is what you are saying. The writer doesn't want to insult the intelligences of the reader by saying Oklahoma University........I doubt if he cares about your intelligence. This has been going on for so long, I don't think it will ever change. I had this experience in 1963 or 64 and I'm sure it applies today....I was an out of state student that didn't understand Oklahoma politics...but I believe it was the last game of the year, #20 Tulsa was playing #10 Houston(yes, playing a Top 10 team in Skelly Stadium) and Tulsa won.....Headlines in the paper Sunday.....in big bold letters, "OU is defeated by Kansas" or some team like that........and down in the left hand corner about 1/10 the size of the OU headlines and about 1/10 the size of the article...."Tulsa beats Houston". Not being from Oklahoma, I wrote a letter to the sports editor of the Tulsa Tribune about this and was surprised to get a reply.....He simply informed me of the number OU readers vs TU readers in the Tulsa area......I presume it was the number of people who had attended OU vs TU.........and the world(no pun intended) evidently hasn't changed.

When our OWN writer does it, it tends to hack me off. I bet he even refers to the Daily Oklahoman as just the "Oklahoman'. He could just start a campaign to change the name of the Tulsa World to just the "World". There is an unintentional bias and Freudian flaw behind the wording people often use. If a TU writer is overly "deferential" to a rival, that tells a lot about our problem and why marketing may not matter. IMO