THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: You gotta fight ... for your right ... to get the name right!

You would think everyone would know by now. 

But apparently not. 

It’s GONE-ZAGA. 

Zag as in Bag, it used to say in the Gonzaga media guide. 

Not Gun-ZAWGA. 

We’ve reached a fairly happy medium over the years with Gun-ZAGA. 

Since the Lovable Zags have been on this remarkable run of playing in 26 straight NCAA men’s basketball tournaments, the education has been in process. 

There were a lot of folks calling them Gun-ZAWGA in the early years. 

Then, after constant prodding, it morphed into Gun-ZAGA. 

Years later, more folks – mostly those around here – call them GONE-ZAGA. 

LOOK, WE get it. 

Sort of. 

There is a college preparatory school in Washington, D.C. named Gonzaga College High School. 

Pronounced Gun-ZAWGA, apparently.

Before the late 1990s, that school in D.C. was probably more well-known nationally than the one in Spokane. 

Not anymore. 

No excuses.  

Everyone has cable now — well, at least they USED to! 

Some still apparently haven’t gotten the memo. 

In doing an otherwise fine job, the moderator at the Wichita, Kan., site, where Gonzaga (the university in Spokane, not the college prep school in D.C.) was assigned for the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament, referred to the Lovables as Gun-ZAWGA during Wednesday’s news conferences for the players and coaches. 

Even one of the TV play-by-play guys on Thursday at one of the other sites called them Gun-ZAWGA. 

Really? Still? 

ENTER KELVIN Sampson. 

Recent NCAA fans know him as the coach of the Houston Cougars, a program nearly dormant for decades after the Phi Slama Jamma years of the 1980s, until Sampson revived the program in recent years. 

Older folks remember him as the coach at Washington State, from 1987-94, before moving on to Oklahoma and Indiana, then to the NBA as an asssistant, and now to Houston.  

Sampson’s Houston Cougars, as you know, played the Lovable Zags in a second-round game Saturday in Wichita. At Friday’s presser, he was asked a question about “Gun-ZAWGA.” 

“Always burns me up when people say that,” Sampson replied. “It’s like calling me Kevin. My name is not Kevin. My mother used to say, people would see my name and say Kevin, she would say, ‘Don’t let people call you Kevin.’ Your name is Kelvin; make sure they pronounce your name right. So that’s why my antennas go up that. Same with Gonzaga. They were our neighbors. And it’s not Spo-CANE. And it’s not Gun-ZAWGA. It’s Gun-ZAGA, and it’s Spo-CAN. Go ahead ... " 

The reporter resumed his question.  

I’VE HEARD it about the state in which I was born. 

It’s ORE-EE-GUN. 

Not ORE-EE-GONE. 

Not ARE-EE-GUN. 

ORE-A-GUN is somewhat acceptable, in the spirit of Gun-ZAGA.

I remember living in Utah, when our family was about to move to Spo-CAN, being wished good luck in our upcoming move to WARSH-ington. 

Not Washington. 

WARSH-ington. 

I guess the good thing about living here is it’s hard to mispronounce Idaho. 

Sometimes people confuse our state with Iowa — or Io-WER, as one of the TV analysts used to say, back when the Hawkeyes were good in the 1980s. 

Coeur d’Alene, of course, is another story. 

Most people pronounce it correctly — though I did know a coach at Mead High who used to talk about going over to KER-d'Alene for a game. 

Some people just spell it wrong — Couer instead of Coeur. 

We live with that. Sort of. 

But Gun-ZAWGA? After all this time? 

We hope for GONE-ZAGA, and settle for Gun-ZAGA. 

Maybe we’re just going to have to live with this, every March. 

Because the lovable team that inspired all of this isn’t going away anytime soon.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 1205, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.