Texas Tech misses the mark with attempt to keep "The Jones" nickname alive - Wreck'Em Red

The backlash started the moment Tech dropped Clifford Jones's name from the football stadium in favor of a corporate rebrand to Galaxy Stadium. Fans were not subtle about their feelings. By most accounts, just about everyone hates the change, and the university's workaround has done little to soften the blow.

Renaming the student section "The Jones" reads as an afterthought to people who spent decades calling the whole stadium by that name. Clifford Jones was the third president of Texas Tech, a man who lived from 1885 to 1972 and was deeply beloved during his lifetime. Squeezing his family's legacy into a corner of the stadium, while a corporation gets the marquee billing, is the part that stings for a lot of Red Raiders.

For students and fans who pack that stadium on fall Saturdays, the rebranding creates a strange split identity. A student section carries a historic name inside a building whose official title holds none of that history.

The Jones nickname survived for decades on its own terms, which makes the university's managed version of it feel like exactly the kind of thing it was designed not to be.