2007-05-23 15:36:28 PDT -- Faced with the opposition of Stanford and Cal, the NFL has changed courses on its efforts to trademark the phrase "The Big Game." It has decided to punt.

On Friday it abandoned its applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to register the phrase.

The NFL had insisted its trademark applications, filed early in 2006, had nothing to do with the Bay Area universities, whose annual football game has been called the Big Game for more than a century.

Brian McCarthy, the NFL's director of corporate communications, reiterated Wednesday that the targets were companies that engage in so-called ambush marketing of the Super Bowl by referring to it in their advertising as the Big Game.

Stanford and Cal weren't taking any chances. They filed for extensions with the trademark office in order to prepare their objections.

McCarthy said the applications were withdrawn because they were written more broadly "than the rights were looking to protect."

He said the league may refile them with language that specifically targets advertising that uses the phrase "the Big Game" to refer to the Super Bowl. "It was never our intent to go after Cal and Stanford," he said.

Attorneys for the two schools said they were pleased with the withdrawal.

"It's very clear they had no hope of overcoming our more than 100-year use of the mark," Cal attorney Mary MacDonald said.

She said that, considering the NFL may refile the applications, "we're not out of the woods yet. ... This was an intent-to-use application on their part. From what I understand, they're going to re-file an actual-use application. I don't know what they're going to base that on."

Stanford attorney Patrick Dunkley said it's possible the two schools will apply for their own trademark on the name, as Alabama and Auburn have done with the phrase Iron Bowl, their annual football game. "We'll have discussions about it," he said.

In addition to the schools, 18 companies had lined up against the NFL's application, including Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Anheuser-Busch, Kellogg and Dell. Although they are not NFL sponsors, some of them advertise on Super Bowl broadcasts.

Rob Becker, an attorney whose firm, Fross Zelnick Lehrman and Zissu of New York, represents some of the firms said, "The NFL saw that it did not make a lot of sense to try to register a descriptive and even generic term that many people and companies throughout the country have used for many years to refer to many games in many sports."

He added, "If they change their applications, our clients' intentions and arguments would be no different."