Doesn't matter what you call yourself.....unless your team plays in a P5 conference in football or P6 in basketball. You are fighting a uphill battle.
Calling yourself UCLA is not going to help. Unless you are confused by the other UCLA.
That's the state of sports since the mid to late 80s. But even then you still had a chance to gain some respect. That all changed with espn giving those P5 conferences 10 to 20 million a year. Once that happened espn needed a split to protect the money they invested. Skip to around 2005 or so when that 10 to 20 jumped to hundreds of millions and you get what we have today.
A name change or branding will not change that. Hell even winning won't...not unless you can do it every year. We see that with Boise St and VCU. If you drop back...any, it's almost like, you never was respected or winning.
Let me put this in another context. Put VCU out west and Zags in the east and both programs reverse. The east is filled with blueblood schools that win year in year out. There's not as many out west so there's room to add someone not in those P5/6 conferences
You can see the jump starting in 2006....when you invest that type of money on a conference. It's not just the top schools that are going to get the benefit of espn pushing them. Nope...espn needs that bottom to have the perception that they are also head and shoulders better than everyone not in a P5/6(basketball)
Most of our budgets increased also....but on the back of student/school and not espn dollars