The countdown is on. In less than three months, the face of university sports in Canada will forever change from Canadian Interuniversity Sport — better known as CIS — to U Sports.
Canada’s governing body for university sports is rebranding in an attempt to better promote itself to Canadians from coast to coast.
According to its new website, U Sports is meant to be “one title, instantly recognizable and identical in both French and English.”
The simple, refined logo is meant to “to wrap the 12,000 student-athletes, 500 coaches, 56 universities, 21 national championships and 12 sports into one brand.”
The strong message about university sports and the slick new website are welcomed.
The new online presence, even though it hasn’t fully launched, is stunning compared to the clunky CIS portal.
The red, white, and black colour scheme pops boldly on the screen while the new layout makes it much easier to click through content.
But the one part of the rebrand that chief executive officer Graham Brown and Vancouver design company Hulse & Durrell should have left alone was the name itself.
The makeover should have been focused on reshaping CIS for future generations of fans, not introducing Canadians to a new name for university sports.
The switch to U Sports is, in fact, the fourth name change the governing body has gone through since the Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union Central was founded in 1908. The governing body had also been called the Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union (1961-1978) and the Canadian Interuniversity Athletics Union (1978-2001) before adopting the CIS handle 15 years ago.
It’s fine to change the logo and website in order to have a new brand that, according its promoters, can “create a massive change in the way university sports are consumed in a fast-changing digital era.”
But these improvements would have been even more effective without changing the name.
Refreshing a sports brand while retaining a familiar name has been done before in Canada. Last year, the Canadian Football League changed its logo and website to attract younger fans.
The league has focused on improving the content on its website and social media platforms in order to better engage with fans.
Rather than putting an end to a century-old string of name changes and using its resources to improve the CIS product, U Sports now has the challenge of reintroducing itself to the Canadian public with an unconventional, rather awkward name.
In comparison to its American counterpart, the NCAA, and professional leagues such as the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, U Sports doesn’t sound like the governing body for Canadian university sports. So the new name is a bold risk.
When the announcement about the rebrand was made in October, U Sports sounded like a publication that covers university sports in Canada. ESPN, for example, has ESPNU as a branch of its network covering the NCAA.
All of this is unfortunate, because Brown has made big strides for university sports since he was hired as CEO last fall.
This year, he helped bring Canadian university football regular season games back to weekly Canadian television for the first time since 2013 in a new deal with Rogers.
With events like the Panda Game between Carleton and uOttawa already captivating audiences across Ottawa, fans can now enjoy them across the country.
The decision to rebrand university sports in Canada would’ve been a perfect move for the CIS if it hadn’t decided to change the organization’s name yet again — especially with all the positive momentum university sports has going for it right now.
Only when the website fully launches in the new year will we know if U Sports catches on, or if — heaven forbid — another new name is needed down the road.