What happened to all the great nicknames?
Posted: Thursday, September 27, 2007 11:54 PM
If he played back in the old days, Rutgers’ Ray Rice would have a kick-ass nationally-known nickname. So would West Virginia’s duo of Slaton & White, and Cal’s dangerous DeSean Jackson. Even the LSU defense would have received a wicked moniker.
But the old days have been replaced by the digital age, in which colorful nicknames aren’t needed for players televised on every given Saturday and discussed 24 hours a day on the Internet.
There’s no need for Grantland Rice to paint the picture of “The Four Horsemen” leading the way for Notre Dame. Or for Warren Brown to vividly describe “The Galloping Ghost” to those who were not fortunate enough to see Red Grange play in person for Illinois.
And then there was Francis Powers, who conjured up the perfect way to describe Wisconsin’s Elroy Hirsch when he wrote: “His crazy legs were gyrating in six different directions, all at the same time; he looked like a demented duck.” It’s a good thing that “Crazy Legs” stuck and “Demented Duck” didn’t.
Even less-imaginative yet well-known nicknames like “Mr. Inside, Mr. Outside,” which the papers tagged to Army’s backfield of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis, aren’t around anymore.
Today’s beat writers and columnists are of a different breed, but now they’re also joined by countless others covering teams for TV channels, radio stations and websites. There are so many voices talking about your favorite school that it wouldn’t be uncommon to get your news from an entirely different set of sources than the fans at the tailgate next to yours.
Within this environment, a consensus is much less likely, making it really hard for creativity to be noticed and for nicknames to catch fire. Surely we don’t require a catchy name to enjoy the exploits of Hawaii’s Colt Brennan or Florida’s Tim Tebow, but wouldn’t that make it more fun?
The most omnipresent football nickname right now belongs to “Pacman” Jones. When you think about it, the only people that probably know him as Adam are the authorities. But, even though we first caught wind of that moniker when he was at West Virginia, it was actually a nickname given to him by his mother because of the way he would attack his bottle as a baby.
Others footballers got their nicknames a little later in life. Dan Wilkinson became “Big Daddy” in the seventh grade, Raghib Ismail took off as “The Rocket” in the eighth grade and Carnell Williams started running as smooth as a “Cadillac” as a junior in high school.
Some of the better football nicknames were created in college, but they came courtesy of teammates, not the media. However, it’s been more than a decade since Jevon Kearse was first called “The Freak” by his Gator teammates. Before that, William “The Refrigerator” Perry’s now seemingly obvious sobriquet was originated by a fellow Clemson Tiger. And the same goes for Ted “The Mad Stork” Hendricks at Miami and “Mean” Joe Greene at North Texas State.
Yeah, it’s been a while. Just think about it for a moment. What’s the best nickname given to a college football player in the last 10 years?
Seriously, the 1980-81 Boston Celtics featured more legitimate nicknames than the entire college football landscape of today.
“Outlined against a blue-gray October sky,” only 55,000 fans were in attendance at the Polo Grounds to see Notre Dame’s 13-7 upset victory over Army in 1924, and none of them had a blog to describe what they saw as they “peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.” So, Grantland Rice said they were the “Four Horsemen” and that was that.
I know there was no need to compare Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, LenDale White and Dwayne Jarrett to Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death, but a snappy nickname for the star-studded 2005 Trojan offense would have been nice.
More importantly, how about something for the stars of today? Does anyone have any ideas?
