Here's the difference, people east of the Rockies may not know Cal and Berkley are the same, but they know they are colleges. They may not be able to locate South Bend on a map, but they've know Notre Dame is a college. As anyone slapping a political bumper sticker or installing a yard sign will tell you, name recognition is a major chunk of the battle. Why do you think Penn State gets so many out-of-state applications? Because its average SAT scores at University Park are lower the the University of South Carolina? No, simple name recognition.
There are many people that asked me the question "What is PITT?" They have no idea. They think it is a clothing line or some other weird thing. Or they think it is an abbreviation for the city or one of its pro teams. Who mixes up Cal with a pro sports team? Miami stumbled on their U quite haphazardly, but it immediately differentiates them from the Dolphins or Marlins. And (relatively recently) they've fully embraced "the U" across every aspect of the university as the single major mark for all university endeavors.
The pervasiveness, or the recognizability, of our university in the general population pales greatly to that of the Michigans, Notre Dames, Dukes, North Carolinas, MITs, Harvards, Yales, and Stanfords. And Pitt's decades and decades of muddled branding and switching back and forth doesn't do it any favors. Pitt needs to pick one major mark...be it script Pitt, block Pitt, a panther, the seal, the Cathedral...something...and stick with it, university wide for use by every single department and entity, for the next 100 years. Until the university gets out of its own way with branding (a major failing of the prior administrations IMO), all you can do is wear your Pitt gear as much as possible.