Superintendent Elizabeth Duran Swinford said Wednesday that the Vicksburg Warren School District will comply with a licensing company’s request to stop using the University of Florida’s logo in connection with Vicksburg High’s athletic teams, but there are no plans to change the high school’s nickname or alter other existing logos.

“Our identity is not going to change. Vicksburg High School will always be the Gators,” Swinford said. “We have different gators. We use different gators. We have a stand up gator, a full body gator. We’ll use one of those.”

Vicksburg High, which has used the “Gators” nickname since it opened in 1973, has long used logos bearing similarities to those used by Florida. As far back as the 1970s, VHS has featured on its football helmets the script “Gators” that Florida uses.

Other high schools around Mississippi — and the country in general — follow the same pattern of copying NFL and college logos and uniform motifs. Brookhaven, for example, dresses like Ole Miss, right down to a script “Ole Brook” on its helmets. Hattiesburg, as well as several south Louisiana high schools, follow LSU’s uniform pattern with only the high school’s initials substituted for “LSU” on the helmet.

The logo that is now causing problems for Vicksburg High is called the “gator head.” It features a fierce cartoon alligator head bursting out of an oval frame. VHS features it on its football helmets, and also had it displayed on banners and signs around campus.

The gator head logo is trademarked by Florida.

College Licensing Company, which handles marketing and licensing for Florida and nearly 200 other colleges and universities, sent a cease and desist letter to VHS principal Derrick Reed.

“Your school’s use of a mark that is nearly identical to the gator head design mark may cause consumers to erroneously believe that the University has authorized Vicksburg High School to use its marks,” reads the letter, dated Sept. 15. “Additionally, it will dilute the distinctiveness of the mark that the public associates with the University’s ability to effectively market and license the use of the Marks in the marketplace.”

The letter goes on to request that VHS stop using the gator head “in connection with its academic, athletic programs and alumni programs.”

Swinford said the school has complied with the request. The logo was most prominently displayed on a series of banners along Gator Drive, the short access road that leads to the high school on Drummond Street. Those banners have been removed. It is still displayed on several signs — one of them hand-painted — near the football fieldhouse.

The football team also incorporates the gator head logo into its black uniforms with small patches on the hip and sleeve. A different green uniform combination has a more realistic-looking alligator on the sleeve. The baseball team also uses the gator head logo on some of its uniforms.

Swinford said the gator head logo would be phased out, but there are no plans to cover it up immediately.

“In five years, when we buy new uniforms, we’ll use a different logo,” Swinford said. “We’re going to phase it out. Immediate is too strong of a word. They asked for a timeline, and we do need a timeline because it does get expensive. We just bought those uniforms.”

Although Swinford plans to comply with the cease and desist letter, neither she nor Vicksburg football coach Alonzo Stevens were happy about it. Stevens called it “a compliment” that his school wanted to emulate a successful Florida program.

“I take it as a compliment. Vicksburg High and the others aren’t going to cut into the University of Florida’s money. You’ve got two national championships in basketball, two BCS titles … c’mon!” Stevens said. “We got through playing Madison Central, they look just like Clemson. If that’s all you’ve got to do, c’mon. This is not for a profitable gain. We’re not in the money-making business. To me, as a coach of 30-something years, it’s the most petty thing I’ve seen in my coaching career.”

In recent months, CLC has cracked down on high schools using unlicensed trademarks. Several schools in Florida that use the Gator nickname and logos have received the same cease and desist letter Vicksburg High got. Other schools that use logos similar to those used by Florida State, Missouri and Pittsburgh have also gotten warnings.

A phone call to a CLC spokesperson from The Vicksburg Post was not returned. In a story published last week in the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., University of Florida spokeswoman Janine Sikes said the crackdown was less about the logo’s use and more about the sale of unlicensed merchandise.

“We have an obligation to protect our trademark or we can lose it to the public domain,” Sikes told the Sun Sentinel. “That was one of the big issues. When the schools are using the merchandise, we lose quality control and all kinds of control on how that logo is used or produced.”

Swinford worried about running afoul of trademarks in the future. She noted the large number of high schools whose uniforms emulate college programs, and said part of the blame lies with third-party vendors who showcase the logos.

“When we go to buy our uniforms, the vendors show us some clip art they have to select from. We did not download this mark from Florida’s web site,” Swinford said.

Swinford was also concerned about how far a school’s ability to trademark something can go.

“There are only so many mascots. We were kind of appalled by it,” Swinford said. “What if they try to trademark the word ‘Gators?’ There’s not a lot of mascots you can use. If you look at the animals out there, you have the monkeys, the armadillos or the ants.”

For now, though, Swinford was confident that Florida was only coming after Vicksburg’s logo and not its nickname.

“To the best of my research, the only thing they’ve trademarked is that mark,” Swinford said. “They can take away our gator mark, but they can’t take away our Gators. We’ll fight for that identity.”