That’s it, we’ve had it. Monday night was the last straw. For three years now, we’ve had to sit through week after week of color commentators bumbling their way through some attempt at christening Joe Burrow with an official nickname. Because apparently, for some reason, they think he has to have one. His elite play, plus his clutchness, destines him for immortality as Joe Something-Or-Other. Fine, whatever, we get it – you want a snappy, cool-sounding name to jazz up your otherwise dry and generally boring analysis. But seriously, how hard can this be?
First, it was a tentative attempt to repurpose “Joe Cool.” This is still occasionally tossed out there, but it’s always done with a sense of furtive sheepishness, as we all know who the real Joe Cool is – Joe Montana, of course. And not only is Montana still alive, his accomplishments obviously still outpace Burrow’s at this point by a hundred country miles. Montana is still widely and uncontroversially regarded as a top two or three of all time quarterback. So stealing his nickname and attaching it to the upstart whippersnapper from Cincinnati – however gifted he is and however much we do like him around here – seems a bit presumptuous.
A second option is “Joe Brrr” – a somewhat awkward variation on “Joe Cool.” This is definitely better than ripping off Montana’s moniker, but still, it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue and it also feels oddly contrived, despite the attempt to play on Burrow’s last name. “Brrr” isn’t really a word, it’s neither verb nor adjective, and it’s not particularly descriptive. It does imply a certain chilliness of character, but it just doesn’t seem as powerful or cool as Burrow himself. There’s also the problem that its homophone “burr” is a small, round, spiky plant seed with little hooks that embeds itself into things in order to reproduce itself. We’ll have to pass.
These are the only two nicknames in three years that the sports media could manage to come up with for a generationally talented quarterback and, frankly, we’re unimpressed. But don’t worry, we’ve got the answer (it took us all of five minutes, but we consider it five minutes well spent). The truth is, in a Marvel/DC world, there are only two painfully obvious choices here, if you are determined to go the “frozen water in his veins/clutch af” route: Iceman or Mr. Freeze. Both would work equally well. Both are generationally appropriate. Both imply that the player in question has some sort of cool-under-pressure ice powers or veins full of frozen water/blood, and neither one sounds like something made up by your eighty-five year old great-uncle (despite, ironically, both being made up by people who would have been even older than that if they were still alive).
Speaking of old people, there is no need to use his first name. It’s the 21st century, and names like “Joe Blah dee Blah” or “So and So Joe” sound silly and outdated. These guys are professional athletes, not characters from a 1940’s gangster film. Joe Namath’s moniker, for instance – Broadway Joe – makes him sound like a mobster who ambushes guys down in the theater district. Iceman may be slightly more cliche than Mr. Freeze, and Mr. Freeze does have a vaguely comic book air, but at least nobody will mistake either one of them for the villain in a Humphrey Bogart flick.
Surprisingly, there is no one with any similar nicknames currently playing in the league. Joe Cool is obviously long gone. Matty Ice retired last year. And the guy who really should have been known as the Iceman – Tom Brady – has not only retired, but was saddled with the insipid “Tom Terrific” early in his career, and it stuck.
If there was ever an elite player who was screwed out of a cool nickname, it was Brady. Let’s not let them do the same thing to Joe Burrow.