* RADIO RANT: ELLinois & SAYRicuse

Another sportscaster bugbear of mine is the pronunciation of college names. I'm not even qualified to comment upon the regionalist phonemic vicissitudes of (the Universities of) Missouri, Louisville, and New Orleans; but what does bug the hell out of me is how Illinois so often becomes "ELL-uh-NOY" and Syracuse becomes "SAYR-uh-KYOOZ" in mainstream sports-media discourse. Maybe some new "great vowel shift" is occurring that I'm unaware of, and maybe even the majority of the people at these institutions/places actually pronounce them this way, but it still grates upon the mind's ear. . . . Hmmm, the phrase "ELLinois and SAYRicuse" is so lilting that it begs for a song lyric; e.g.—

DAH-duh-DAH—gotta pay their dues
At ELLinois and SAYRicuse—

—but who's got time to even pick up the guitar (then GarageBand) nowadays? . . .