- Mainstream sports fans do watch USports, just not in the numbers we would like. One factor (amongst others) which damages USports is the perception that it is run by disconnected aloof bureaucrats. In fact, the name change from CIS to USports was another example of this.
- The native imagery was over 25 years in the past and was not part of the origins of the name. The Americans had their Harvard Crimson and we had our McGill Redmen.
- "Nobody cares" is over the top. Name changes are rare and the subject of much consultation.
- Some schools have different male and female names and that really is off-topic. There is no indication of McGill changing this.
- The new RMC was a merger of three schools, two of which had hockey teams (one English and one French). In 1995, College Militaire Royale (CMR) and Royal Roads Military College (RRMC) were merged into the RMC. In 1997 the amalgamated college changed its team name from "Redmen" to "Paladins". CMRSJ was re-opened in 2008. Their team is called the CMRSJ Remparts. They play rec league hockey.
CMR St-Jean is now a 2-year CEGEP - a feeder to RMC. It no longer offers 4-year undergraduate degrees.
I appreciate your efforts at investigating the history of RMC, but I was a Cadet at RMC from 1993-1997, and I was involved in the name selection process. RMC adopted the Paladins nickname in 1996 (although, to be fair, it took some time to amend the old hockey jerseys). I can't recall the entire list of options, but Paladins won by a landslide (side note: it's extremely difficult to find a cool bilingual nickname). The second-most popular option was Phoenix. Thank heaven we avoided that.
"Much consultation" at RMC involved the Commandant telling us that the name was changing, and that we'd get to vote, but it would be a bilingual nickname. Amongst the many changes at RMC at that time, changing from Redmen to Paladins was pretty far down the list of things to worry about. Slightly higher on the list was welcoming several hundred cadets from RRMC and CMR who (a) didn't want to be in Kingston and (b) didn't have rooms to sleep in.
So, yes, nobody lost any sleep over the name change. Sure, there was initial resistance among those who came in with the Redmen nickname, but people supported the hockey program because it was associated with RMC. Nobody went to watch RMC's other sports, anyways, so there was no real issue with those.
RMC never had any Native American imagery associated with its nickname - ever - and in fact RMC was far ahead of other universities in celebrating Native American history. 3 Squadron was named after Pontiac in 1955, and 6 Squadron was named after Brant in 1968. The name change was entirely driven by the closure of CMR and the need to be bilingual.
But, really, nobody will care when it's all said and done. 3800 people went to the K-Rock Centre to watch RMC vs Queens, not to watch Paladins vs. Gaels.