Verandaman,
You travel the country watching endless college football games and although you say you've met a ton of people who know what UB is, I'm sure they're also the type of people who could name all 11 Sun Belt schools.
As for Buffalo vs NY,
My opinion remains the same as always. Buffalo is not a brand that anyone east of Rochester is going to get behind or care about. The name Buffalo is synonymous with losing, bad weather, and being near Canada. I've said this a dozen times already but I grew up in Albany and it was universally accepted that Buffalo was at least an 8 hour drive away and you needed a pack of sled dogs to get there (this is probably also the reason that I even ended up at UB since I was one of your prototypical "I need to get as far away as possible" prospective college students). I never went past Syracuse one single time in my childhood because in my mind that was like going into the Badlands. However, I committed to the school on blind faith and it only took a few days of living on south campus to realize that every perception I had about Buffalo was completely wrong. It's a great town with a unique cultural identity, awesome food, and some great entertainment options. Not to mention, the weather is actually quite tolerable (unless you're in the south towns) and not really all that different from anywhere else in the northeast.
The problem though is that the city of Buffalo has embraced the inaccurate negative perceptions instead of attempting to eliminate them. It's almost like people in Buffalo relish the fact that everyone in the country thinks they're completely irrational for living there. All this has done is detach the city from the rest of the state and it is because of this that I think calling ourselves "New York" or "New York State" is the only effective method if we want to get people east of Batavia to actually pay attention to our institution and finally take the time to understand some of the good qualities that exist in WNY. And who cares if people in North Carolina see "New York" on our jerseys and think of New York City? At least it starts a conversation about our school that otherwise would never happen, not to mention you get to immediately correct them and explain how Buffalo is actually in New York state and then give them the standard spiel about "the largest, most comprehensive...". The second that these people hear New York, they're intrigued because it's a brand with tremendous value. We are incredibly lucky to have access to it and we should be taking advantage before other schools do. New York immediately makes people think we are a large, important school instead of a small regional college. It gets them thinking we possibly belong in the same sentence as schools like Rutgers and UCONN, instead of constantly needing to correct the constant misconception that we are more closely aligned to schools like Wisconsin-Green Bay and Cleveland State. This is the reality outside of WNY whether people want to accept it or not.
Ultimately, it would take years to develop but it would be a huge improvement for both our school and the city of Buffalo in the long run if the school was able to connect itself to the rest of New York State. Only then would we be able to attract a larger conference and be able to achieve the other pillars of the original NYBI. Without New York in our name, nobody cares. We could win the MAC every single year in football but people across the country will still see our school as an irrelevant midmajor.
Lastly, backing out of the New York Bulls Initiative is an utter disaster. All it does is show that UB tried to connect with the rest of the state and failed. Our own people shot down our attempt at expanding the reach of this university to the rest of New York because for some reason they are under the delusion that the city of Buffalo alone can support this institution. It can't. Buffalo will never fully support this school to the level of a major BCS school as long as there are 3 professional sports teams also in town. It simply isn't big enough. The AAC and other bigger conferences are a pipe dream for us unless we bring the state of New York to the table.
