History ArtifactTitle / Sports

* The Big Ten Conference has not had 10 teams since Penn State joined in the early 90's, taking it up to 11 (the logo was then updated to include an "11" in negative space to represent this). It got even better when Nebraska joined in 2011, their departure from the Big 12 Conference (along with Colorado to the Pac-10, which now has 12 members with the addition of Colorado and Utah) resulted in the Big 12 having ten members and the Big Ten having twelve. The Big Ten expanded even further in 2014, adding Maryland and Rutgers to give the league 14 full members, and will go to 18 members in 2024 after poaching Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington from the Pac-12. The Big Ten, with its eponymous network and 100 years of history, will not be relinquishing its name to the Big 12, founded in 1994 (with play starting in 1996).

** Starting in the 2016–17 school year, the conference averted this trope to a degree, rebranding itself as the ASUN Conference. And it turned out that trope-wise, the conference needed the rebranding, since it added a different Kentucky school in 2020 (Bellarmine, out of Louisville... whose namesake college already plays in the Atlantic Coast Conference...so it sorta makes sense?). They added Eastern Kentucky in July 2021, along with Central Arkansas and, for the second time, Jacksonville State (from Alabama; Jacksonville [in Florida] was already a member), though the last of these left in 2023 for Conference USA.

* The West Coast Conference had BYU, located in the inland western state of UsefulNotes/{{Utah}}, as a member from 2011 to 2023.

* The Pac-10 averted this with a 2011 expansion; it at least renamed itself the Pac-12 with the addition of Colorado and Utah.[[note]]At the same time, the conference's formal name changed from "Pacific-10 Conference" to "Pac-12 Conference".[[/note]] However, the "Pac" part (short for "Pacific") has been something of an artifact since 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State joined the then Pac-8 to become the Pac-10. It's looking more and more likely that the Pac-12 will fold, with ''ten'' of its 12 members leaving in 2024.
* The SEC abandoned the "Southeastern" part of their name (or at least stretches it right up to the breaking point) with the inclusion of Texas A&M (located in what's considered part of the American Southwest, though with College Station being in east Texas at least it's geographically ''near'' the Southeast) and Missouri (Midwest, and being in the northern edge of central Missouri it's even more of a geographic stretch than Texas A&M, though less of a cultural stretch as the area around the school's home of Columbia [though not the town itself] was a hotbed of pro-Confederate sentiment in the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]]) in 2012.

* The very name "mixed martial arts" referred to competitions where fighters from various martial arts disciplines would compete against each other. But since some techniques lend themselves to athletic competition better than others, fighters began picking up techniques from across multiple disciplines to get ahead. "MMA" has essentially become a fighting style of its own, and MMA gyms exist all over the world. In a way, the "mixed" part still applies, but rather than having specialists from various disciplines squaring off, the fighters individually draw from various disciplines.

* The very name "mixed martial arts" referred to competitions where fighters from various martial arts disciplines would compete against each other. But since some techniques lend themselves to athletic competition better than others, fighters began picking up techniques from across multiple disciplines to get ahead. "MMA" has essentially become a fighting style of its own, and MMA gyms exist all over the world. In a way, the "mixed" part still applies, but rather than having specialists from various disciplines competing against each other, the fighters individually draw from various disciplines.