This column appeared in the Arizona Daily in September 2005.

You’re nothing without a nickname

By Ed Odeven

What would sports be without nicknames? Something as bland as plain toast or a waffle cone minus the ice cream.

Nicknames are fun.

They give us something to remember besides a last-second basket, a game-winning home run or a bonehead penalty in the final 20 seconds.

We may not recall that running back Rod Smart attended Western Kentucky, but we certainly have trouble forgetting that he was known as “He Hate Me” during his short tenure in the XFL. (He now plays for the Carolina Panthers.)

Similarly, it’s tough to forget that Randy Johnson is the “Big Unit,” Jerome Bettis is “The Bus,” William Perry is/was (depending on your point of view) “The Refrigerator,” and Earvin Johnson will always be “Magic.”

The NAU football team has a player with a fitting nickname, too. He’s known as “Speedy.”

Which precisely describes how junior running back Brandon Anthony plays the game.

“My coach in second grade started calling me Speedy,” Anthony said after Thursday’s afternoon practice. “He gave me the name Speedy after seeing me run. “I wasn’t very good that year, but it started off then and it escalated from there.”

Wherever he went, school or church, a neighborhood buddy’s house or even his own home in Oceanside, Calif., people called him Speedy.

“I didn’t see anybody else faster than me in the whole league,” he says now.

Anthony’s Pop Warner team went undefeated for five years.

“Everybody knew our team was the Falcons,” he adds, “and Speedy was just a name that everybody remembered.”

Later on, others started calling him “Speed Racer” and “Little Speed.”

“They gave me nicknames for my nickname,” he says, laughing.

Anthony’s NAU teammate, freshman safety Marcus McIlwain has a more practical nickname.

“Right now up here, my nickname is ‘Mac,'” he says, “because my last name is McIlwain and people have a hard time pronouncing it.

“I get Mc-Kill-wain and Mc-Ill-wain, all kinds of stuff. So people eventually started calling me Mac.”

One of McIlwain’s former Hueneme (Calif.) High teammates was given the nickname “Pinkie.” Josh Pinkard now plays safety for the USC Trojans.

“It was kind of funny because he’s a real big dude,” McIlwain says. “He’s about 6-1, 215 (or) 220, and you think about that and you think of a lot smaller guy.”

Longtime Flagstaff High School football coach Craig Holland, a former NAU quarterback, has been around athletics long enough to learn a few memorable nicknames.

I asked him to reveal a few of his favorites:

Doug “Beach Ball” Barr, a former offensive tackle for the Jacks in the early ’70s.

Tom Ramsey, alias Ram Dog, a defensive tackle for NAU in that same time span.

Jeremy Walker, aka FireWalker, who played defensive tackle for FHS in the ’90s.

Brothers Scott, Brian and Todd Skinner, the Skin Dogs, who played for the Eagle football squad in recent years.

“Pup” Norman Gill, a player Holland calls “the youngest of the great family of backs for the Eagles in the ’70s and ’80s”.

Bob “Coon Dog” Kuhn, a former Eagle who’s now the assistant principal at Flagstaff Middle School.

Here in Flagstaff we have an abundance of sports teams — high school and college, intramurals and city rec leagues. On these teams there are dozens of players with clever, funny, absurd and nonsensical nicknames.

I’d like to hear about them — and the stories behind these names — so send them to me.

Look for more on this topic in this space in the coming weeks.