In very important newsworthy news: The Ohio State University attempts to trademark the letters “OSU,” and Oklahoma State University plans on opposing it
Naturally, Ohio State would attempt something like this, because if there’s any school more arrogant and self-important about their branding it’s Ohio State. Forget about all the other schools that use the acronym, they don’t really actually exist, or are remotely relevant in the world of collegiate sports.
Except that Oregon State University isn’t completely garbage at football, and actually has a pretty decent basketball program for both men and women. Except that Oklahoma State University isn’t a terrible football program in their own right.
But none of them are really OSUs.
Regardless of how this stupid pissing match ends up, there really is a really easy solve for this little spat: play for it.
Oregon State doesn’t seem to really care about the whole conflict, because at the root of it, it’s really stupid and nobody at Oregon State really cares. And considering Oklahoma State is the one trying to throw up the legal block on a really petty debate in the first place, what better solve is there for them to play against Ohio State for the right to see who owns the acronym OSU?
Sure, the BCS is full of rhetoric and bullshit reasons why this wouldn’t happen in any timely fashion, but just about every Power-5 conference school has one built in rivalry games into their schedules, what’s one more to a few others?
In fact, make it a yearly game, where Oklahoma State plays Ohio State, and the winner is allowed to exclusively and legally use OSU for that one calendar year, until the conclusion of the following year’s OSU Showdown.
Once again, professional wrestling logic comes to the rescue of theoretical college football hypotheticals. Imagine after Ohio State drops the trademark down, and Oklahoma State gets sour about it and starts making their unhappiness public, thus starting a feud, there could be several weeks and months building up to a showdown over the OSU trademark. Halfway to the showdown, Oklahoma State can throttle Oregon State by three touchdowns, “just to send a message” to Ohio State that they’re coming, much like when Kurt Angle beat up Marty Jannetty during his feud with Shawn Michaels.
And then an Oklahoma State vs. Ohio State game would be full of narrative and have some meaning, and then the winner of the game could really proceed to market the shit out of some OSU merch. The best would be if Oklahoma State wins and Ohio State gets all salty and bitter grapes about losing, so they go out and trademark TOSU to incorporate the conceited “the” into their name, but in the end nobody cares that they have a second-rate, second place trademark.
Who the fuck needs a courtroom when there are perfectly good and beautiful football fields where stupid conflicts like this could be settled instead?
