Who has heard about this controversy with a college player dunking over LeBron James? If you haven't, I'll recap the story:

LeBron was at his LeBron James Skills Academy when a pickup game started. Jordan Crawford, a college player at Xavier University (here in my hometown of Cincinnati), was playing when he blew by his defender and then hurled himself at the basket. He unleashed a monstrous two-handed slam dunk, over the top of the hapless defender -- who just so happened to be LeBron James.

Imagine that, Jordan Crawford -- who usually unleashes his fury on the powers of the Atlantic-10 Conference, stepped up his game and dunked on one of the best current players in the NBA. Yes, this dunk alone is enough to make news on basketball message boards -- but why am I discussing it here in JockStocks? Because of Nike's (NKE) reaction.

As a proud alumna of the University of Virginia, I'll admit that our neighbor and sometimes-opponent, West Virginia University, often got a bad rep. Snobbery ran thick through the streets of Charlottesville, and the Mountaineers of WVU were a too-easy target for affable accusations of slow-wittedness and overall ignorance. We Cavaliers didn't actually believe these stereotypes (at least I didn't), but a recent development for the Mountain State sure supplies some grist for the mill, albeit unfairly.

West Virginia University captured the trophy at the National Invitation Tournament in late March but also quickly captured the attention of eagle-eyed proofreaders and English majors everywhere. The team's championship tee-shirts, snapped in hundreds of celebratory photos, contain a misspelling, billing "West Virgina" as tournament champions. Did you catch it? "Virgina." I've heard that there is no "I" in team, but "West Virginia" should have three of them.

The school's sports information director said that the NIT, not WVU, printed the shirts. Indeed, the state's governor has received an apology from Sixth Man Sports, the company that designed the tee-shirts, and evidently never caught the mistake.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.