I posted my theory about this a while back. They only use one logo for the entire school now, the goofy UK. It's close to the old athletic logo, but not quite. My thought was they changed it because someone told them it would be good for "branding" to have one universal logo. Knowing that while the athletic logo was easily the most recognizable, the academics would ***** and moan about it being the logo for the school, so they just made a small (but ******) change to sell it to everyone. Classic case of trying to please everyone and pleasing no one.
Caving into the faculty on the logo for the Commonwealth's flagship, land-grant institution - when the most recognizable names in college sports AND academia are known by one letter (in no particular order, Michigan, Minnesota [even with a different M], Maryland [same], Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Arizona, Oregon, even Illinois, blah, blah).
Badly missed opportunity, and even worse that we HAD it and intentionally changed it.
That's so Milquetoast.