Today's Tidbit... Colleges Formerly Known As...

Hordes of actors and artists of different persuasions have used stage names rather than their birth names, but name changes have been less frequent among athletes. There have been high-profile name cases, such as Lew Alcindor becoming Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Cassius Clay opting for Mohammed Ali, but the well of athlete name changes runs dry quickly.

On the other hand, changes in school names have been more frequent, even if many changes are only known to people who scan old newspaper sports pages. With that thought, let's look at some name changes among football-playing or former football-playing schools. I'll not waste your time with name changes that preceded a school's first football team, but let’s review some name changes that occurred over the years.

Of course, a wise man once said the world has two types of people: those who categorize and those who do not. I am in the categorizing camp, so I reviewed each school's before and after names and placed them into three categories: Saints, Not Saints, and Places.

The Saints

• St. Mary's College - Dayton

• Trinity College - Duke

• Pittsburg Catholic College of the Holy Ghost - Duquesne

• St. Vincent's College - Loyola Marymount

• St. Xavier College - Xavier