Name of the Week: Michigan Edition

Sorry for being so very late on everything. Buncha posts today, including podcast and Gettin' Familiar with, if I get around to it.  Plus I wanna watch the Illinois game on ESPN3 and write stuff about it.

Congrats to Fritz Rock \m/  \m/  \m/ FRITZ ROCK YEAH for beating the competition in the Illinois poll - I really thought DeJazz Woods had a chance but FRITZ ROCK just made our heads bang more than anybody else. 

So on to this week! Michigan doesn't have the best names, disappointingly, but we'll make it work. Honorable mentions include defensive end Chris Rock - he's white! - wide receiver Junior Hemingway, and running back Jihad Rasheed. (Jihad Muhammad from Cincinnati back in the day woulda made the cut.)

Names after the jump

No. 35, Jordan Barpal: Hey, this is Jordan! He's my pal who I go to bars with. I call him my bar pal. 

Jordan is a junior walk-on wide receiver who has yet to play for Michigan.

No. 5, Justice Hayes: Just because this is an actual name a judge could have. 

Hayes is a freshman running back who has yet to take the field.

No. 54, Jareth Glanda: For a second, I looked at this and thought it was a real name. You know, like you were gonna name your kid Jared but you thought you'd make it a little bit intriguing so you went with Jareth. Then I googled Jareth. It turns out the only person ever named Jareth is actually David Bowie's character in the movie Labyrinth. Take it away, Wikipedia.

Jareth is the Goblin King of The Labyrinth, a vast kingdom within another realm...Though the ruler of the goblins, Jareth actually is not a goblin, and he appears human. In the first draft of the script, however, he turned into a goblin when Sarah rejected him, thus suggesting that he was a goblin to begin with. His powers include the ability to form crystal orbs in his hands.

Glanda also sounds like a good last name for a swamp creature. So, you know, this dude is definitely some sorta mythical.

Glanda is the team's snapper on field goals, which must be difficult what with the hands filled with crystal orbs and being questionably gendered on a lot of his songs but still being pretty great overall.

No. 13, Carvin Johnson: This totally slipped past me for a few minutes, but it's a great friggin' name. First of all, I asked an Asian dude who he thought the best wide receiver in the NFL was, and he gave me this answer, and I just went "BUT HE'S A SAFETY FOR MICHIGAN" and he tried to tell me something about something called the Detroit Rions and that if I made this joke I'd offend most of my readers. Secondly, what the hell type of name is "Carvin". I like imagining it as a verb - Carvin' - like dude just loves sculptin' stuff outta wood so much that people call him that.

Carvin is a sophomore safety who plays in reserve. He's got eight tackles on the year!

No. 9, Martavious Odoms: You can't really go wrong with any name of at least four syllables ending in "vious", in the vein of Barkevious Mingo. Martavious is no exception. Especially when you pretend he's an elderly Jewish guy by calling him Marty. 

Martavious is a wide receiver who has slowly fallen out of the rotation - he started as a freshman and recorded 129 yards one time against Illinois, but doesn't have a catch on the year.