To a Tennessee native, that desert state out west next to California with all the casinos and race horses is pronounced, “Ne-VAH-duh.” And so it was that Mack Brown was saying the name of one of the schools in his first college football game as a television analyst—the New Orleans Bowl in December 2014 between Louisiana-Lafayette and the University of Nevada.
It turns out the locals in Reno, Las Vegas and points beyond pronounce their state, “Nev-AD-uh.”
“Well, I’m getting yelled at in the first quarter because I’m saying the name wrong,” says Brown, a native of Cookeville and later a resident of a half dozen Southern states.