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Adam Smotherman, smothering a man.

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 IT'S BACK MOFOS! YES YES YES YES YES YES YES NAMES NAMES NAMES NAMES NAMES.

(As always, apologies to the Name of the Year blog. This isn't meant to be different or funnier than what they do, or even original - it's merely a way to tolerate the boredom of there being four days left until the next game - and giving us people to watch for on the opposing teams.)

We've waited through most of winter. Spring came, with its flowers and showers. Summer scorched our cities, from Ryan Field's brownish grass to my home in New York. Fall is dawning. And here we sit, a day before football season, three before Northwestern's first game. No sport, nothing on this green earth of ours brings the names better than American football. Each week brings us about 100 candidates, and I narrow them down to the best five, and you, the readers, find the best one. 

Vanderbilt is a squad with some tremendous last names, but not much in the way of dramatic/poetic given names - a lot of smart dudes with families who knew how to spell things will do that. It's not the deepest name pool, but it'll get us started. First, let's look at who didn't make the cut: wide receiver Andre Hal (double first names always work,), quarterback Jared Funk (if only his first name was more interesting than "Jared" this could've been a competitor), defensive end Theron Kadri, linebacker Fitz Lassing (very, very tempting to put a guy named "Fitz" in the field - couldn't do it) and linebacker Tristan Strong are this weeks runners up.

Now, onto the nominees:

#82, Jameson Sackey: Naming your child after the alcohol you were consuming when they were conceived is a long, storied tradition. And nothing makes a better name than Jameson Irish Whiskey. Furthermore, if you  change the "whisk" to "sack", Jameson Irish Whiskey is called Jameson Irish Sackey, which is a great thing. If Sackey was a defensive end primarily involved with tackling the QB behind the line of scrimmage, otherwise known as "sacks", we'd have a winner here, but unfortunately, he's not. I would've appreciated a capitalized "O" a la former Chicago Bull JamesOn Curry, in which case his name might have been pronounced either "Jameson" or "James On". Also, sack is a funny word when said in a non-football contest.

Sackey is a junior walk-on wide receiver who hasn't yet played for Vandy - that likely won't change against Northwestern.

#4, Udom Umoh: Anybody whose initials are "UU" is an automatic shoe-in for a nomination. Also, his first name is very nearly a type of noodle. Umoh was born in Nigeria, which makes his appearance on a college football roster rather impressive.

Udom is a starting wide receiver, one of Vandy's best.  He caught 20 passes for 267 yards last year, nabbing a touchdown for the Dores' only points against Ole Miss. He'll be in his starting role on Saturday.

#70, Justin Cabbagestalk: I'm genuinely surprised that "Cabbagestalk" is a real last name for a person and not like a troll or something. First of all, cabbages have stalks? Aren't they just like lettuce? Don't they just kinda grow out of the ground and just be there? Do cabbages really have stalks? Can you climb up them and reach a magical land inhabited by huge giants? The world will never know. Actually, I'm pretty sure many farmers do know, but I for one don't care. Anyway, Cabbagestalk is a pretty sweet compound word to have as your name, unless you don't like when bloggers mention that your name that sounds like a mythical, magical woodland creature from a Harry Potter book. If only his first name was something else magical, like Udom. Udom Cabbagestalk would be a winner.

Cabbagestalk is a backup redshirt freshman center who's never played - he'll probably do most of his stalking on the sidelines.

#59, Adam Smotherman: THE SMOTHERMAN. HE IS A MAN THAT SMOTHERS PEOPLE. AND HE PLAYS DEFENSIVE TACKLE. JESUS.. Another case if a nearly perfect last name that just needed a more awesome first name, like "SUFFOCATEGUY" or "MURDERBOY", because quite frankly, Adam doesn't work. Those would go well with a last name like Smotherman, as does playing defensive tackle, the most smothery position on the field. 

Adam is a senior defensive tackle, measuring 6-foot-4 and 295 pounds. (Smother. Man.) He started 11 games as a junior and every game last year, notching 31 tackles - by all rights, he'll be starting up front on Saturday, attempting to smother Northwestern's running backs.

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I received some disturbing news on Friday afternoon: 

CNBC compiled their "best names in college football" teams, and although I certainly approve of the work done by NU grad Darren Rovell, as a supporter of all that's good in the world of names, I cannot stand for some of the name decisions made by the selecting committee.

First off, making name teams, but not actually making it positionally correct? Sloppy.

Secondly, some disturbing choices were made. Although I do approve of Minnesota Name of the Week winner Shady Salamon cracking the all-league first team, we had several Name of the Week runners-up - people who you, the voting populace of Sippin' on Purple, the finest voting committee known to man, didn't even deem to have the best name on their respective teams - cracking the lists. We have Iowa's Marvin McNutt and Collin Sleeper - McNutt lost a squeaker in the voting to Pat Angerer, Sleeper didn't even make the poll. We have Al-Terek McBurse from Purdue, who wasn't even in the running against Waynelle Gravesande. We have Wisconsin's Coddye Ring-Noonan, who lost to the melancholy heir, Prince Moody. And Illinois' Wisdom Onyegbule, who came up one short of beating Whitney Mercilus for Illinois' title. Not to mention Mikhail Marinovich, who didn't even make the voting list for Syracuse.

These are all minor outrages. 

But to me, the biggest outrage is the naming of freshman Northwestern linebacker Chi Chi Ariguzo to the first team. 

Don't get me wrong, Chi Chi Ariguzo is a  good name. His last name is Ariguzo, which you don't see every day, and his first name is a derogatory term Jamaican people use for gay people, so there's that. Certainly an interesting name. 

But, gents, we have a team with good names. Multiple good names. I'm not even talking about rookie guys whose names I've just seen for the first time, like Joe Cannon, Chance Carter, and Torin Dupper. I'm talking about Arby Fields. I'm talking about Adonis Smith. And of course, Stone Pinckney.

Sirs, by saying Chi Chi Ariguzo is the best name on our team, you're not only doing a disservice to your readers, and to Chi Chi, but to yourselves.

Signed,

Rodger Sherman, Supporter of Excellence in the Field of Naming.

These, good gentlemen, are your candidates from the name of the year. There are four of them. That's why this post is here. I don't like having four names of the year. I posit we should have one name of the year. 

And it's on you to decide them. 

So, you're probably wondering: Northwestern's last football game was a month and 20 days ago. How come we're just voting on the best opposing football player name today?

Well, I'm glad you asked. You see, I like to do things big.  Check that. I like to attempt doing things big, then not doing them. I had two truly phenomenal (in my opinion) concepts for improving coverage of the Name of the Year. 

1. Name of the Year roundtable: I was going to get like five or six of Northwestern's greatest name debaters under one roof, turn on a mic, and let us go to work on dissecting the Name of the Year poll, PTI style, for like 25 minutes. This fell through because I'm lazy.

2. Partisan analysis: I was going to ask a blogger from the school of each nominated football player why they felt their school's nominee deserved to bring home the title. This fell through because I'm lazy and because the Auburn dudes never got back to me when I tried to interview them pre-Outback Bowl, so I figured getting them to discuss the merits of Eltoro Freeman would be a lost cause.

But, instead, in the spirit of the posts I did throughout the year, all you got is me. Things I wrote, and a buttload of it. Next year, I'm planning on integrating some of those other ideas, and maybe more, but for now, you got this.

(Oh, and for the record, I'm aware of Name of the Year, and that I'm kind of a ripoff. That being said, this was a really fun way to kill time and provided me some good posts during the year, it got us all familiar with opposing rosters, gave us somebody to root for on opposing teams, and, uh, we had fun. I'll take being unoriginal and good over being innovative and crappy any day of the week.) 

Now vote! The poll is directly below, and also at the bottom if you hit the jump. I urge you to hit the jump, cuz there's all sorts of crazy nonsense down there.

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During the bowl selection process, there are a lot of factors that a team's fan has to consider: which will be the easiest travel option? Which will bring my team the best national exposure? And most importantly, which team will my team have a good opportunity of beating?

Me, however, I had a different focus: I pored over each school's football roster, and debated the pros and cons of every team's respective best names. (Hey, gotta pass time during finals week somehow besides playing Bubble Spinner, putting up blog posts about my boy Bangs, and listening to the song "Forever" by Drake on repeat for hours at a time. And studying.) 

On decision day, the Outback Bowl pitted us with the right team: it was clear to me that Auburn was the best opponent when it came to potential name nominations. But I feel I would be remiss not to honor some of our coulda been name heroes: the University of Miami brought adorably named cornerback Ray Ray Armstrong, while Clemson had a freakin' bevy of awesome options: linebacker Quandon Christian, the two-headed Brown monster of Kourtnei and Kantrell Brown (not related!), and my personal favorite, grad student safety Sadat Chambers. 

But let us not dwell in the past. On to the Auburn War Eagles Regular Eagles Tiger-Eagles Tigers (this is going to take a while). Honorable mentions from that squad include D'Antoine Hood, Phillip Pierre-Louis (the dreaded triple-name threat)  Ralph Spry, and Travante Stallworth. 

Now, onto the nominees, after that jump!

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DUN-DUN FREAKIN DUN, PEOPLE. 

That's right. As you may remember, for the majority of the season, every week I selected the four or five best names from the team Northwestern was playing against and allowed you, the public, to select which you thought was the best name from that team. I'm not talking the best as in the funniest, I'm talking about all-around best. The most magnificient name. 

Now, with 12 weeks gone, and nothing for us to talk about, I bring you the 12 champions. The Sippin' on Purple Names of the Week. 

And again, I bring these men before you, and I ask you to determine their worth. 

Of these 12 (actually 11, we'll get to that), pick your favorite. The top three will advance to a final round of voting with the best name from our opponent in the bowl game, as I optimistically left a slot for a 13th week on my impromptu name plaque (né a sunday night dinner flyer that i took down while putting new ones up), even though at the time, we were 3-1 and 1-1 in conference. Yeah optimism.

Anyway, since that fateful day like two months ago, the plaque sifted to the bottom of my desk, but I just went through the pile, retrieved it, and updated it with the names that have won since. Here is that plaque, as pictured via my iPhone. 

Below, you see the poll. After the jump, I have the names listed in chronological order and what I wrote about those names at the time, plus a contextual line or two about how I feel about that name now. 

So today, we separate the wheat from the chaff. We separate the Lorenzo Seaberry III's of the world from the Nate Paopao's. If we never went through this stage, those Seaberry's would potentially draw votes away from the Paopao's in the final, and I hope to avoid any Naderization of the potential final result in this poll. 

Gentlemen, vote, and vote well. 

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So, first things first, congratulations to Whitney Mercilus for taking home one of the lowest-vote totals in Name of the Week history, beating Wisdom Onyebule 13-12. It's mainly cuz I posted it on thursday, but, still. Wisdom made good on his name of the week naming,  and turned in a sack, proving to me that his name is, in fact, pronounced "merciless." Which is awesome. Either way, it was a bad week in the name world for fans of wisdom, and an even worse one for fans of mercy. (Hopefully, not to many of y'all are big mercy fans anyway. In fact, the only time I am ever pro-mercy, generally, is when discussing the second single from Marvin Gaye's album What's Goin On, which is, what, top-10, top-20 albums all time, hands-down? Anybody gonna disagree with me? Good. Moving on.)

I'm sorry to say it, but Wisconsin is painfully devoid of interesting names. I could make a list of the five most interesting names (candidates include O'Brien Schofield, Elijah Theus, Coddye Ring-Noonan, and Jaevery McFadden.) But this would be doing a disservice to both them and you, the readers.

Therefore, it is my solemn and painful duty to tell you that there will be no name of the week poll. I'm preemptively awarding the regular season's final title to the owner of the far and away best name on the team, Prince Moody. 

Surely, there will be some disappointment - especially from the Prince himself, knowing how moody that poor chap is - but I hope we can all agree it's the right thing to do. I hope you respect Prince with the same veneration deserved of all name of the week winners.

Prince is a senior defensive back, but essentially only plays on special teams. He's a history major, and is academic all-Big Ten, so, dayum, Also, his cousin is Natrone Means. I hope you enjoy that information.

So here's how this is going to work: I've updated the name plaque, and next week, we'll do a 12-man name of the year run-off to decide the top four names of the year out of the teams NU has played, and those top four will advance to play whoever has the name of the week on the team we play in a bowl. Then we will decide the Name of the Year, and then I'll find a way of getting the plaque to the award-winner. So people, get ready.

So last week, Sippin on Purple saw the greatest name poll in its brief history: Pat Angerer was up 39-38 with five minutes to game time, and somebody swooped in at the 11th hour and cast a vote for Marvin McNutt, knotting the score at 39 a piece.

Well, first, off, thanks to the 104 of you who voted. I was contemplating making myself the tiebreaking 105th vote, but decided against it. Angerer and McNutt both deserve their share of the title, so, congratulations to the both of them.

Anyways, on to the U of I, here's some runners-up:  QB Juice Williams (you've heard of him), defensive lineman Sirod Williams, kicker Derek Dimke, defensive back Dere Hicks, defensive back Joelil Thrash defensive back Ashante Williams (the way to my heart: references to late-90's R&B/hip-hop acts. I performed an acoustic version of No Scrubs in front of about 100 people last week in Tech Auditorium, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. And Ashante is about as close as you can get.), defensive lineman Clay Nurse (because it means something that doesn't make sense) and quarterback Sean McGushin (His birth name back in Hawaii was actually just "McGushin" but he gave himself a first name to be more normal.)

The fact that those last few were runners up are testaments to the depth of UI's names.

And now, on to the names:

#27, Antonio Gully: Antonio is, by default, the gulliest human being on the planet earth. Because his last name is gully. And Antonio is a pretty sweet first name too, not a top ten first name, but up there.

Antonio is a junior defensive back, but hasn't actually cracked the rotation outside of special teaming. 

#14, Miami Thomas: First off, Miami is from Chicago. Errrrr? In other news, if you're going to name your kid after a city, make sure it's a good one. Nobody's going to be friends with Cleveland Thomas, or Detroit Thomas, or East St. Louis Thomas. But Miami? Man, that kid's so cool. I'ma name my kid New York Sherman, and he's going to be the most popular kid in school, and school sports tv shows will focus on his sporting events way more than any other kid's sporting events, and when his teams are good, people will discuss how it's good for the league that his team is succeeding.

Miami is a cornerback. He started last year's game against NU, but hasn't played yet this year.

#16, Michael Hoomanawanui: His friends call him "Mike" for short, and "Hoomanawan" for short, also. 

Mikey Hoo is a pretty damn good tight end. Now a junior, Hoomanawanui has been starting since his freshman year. He had 25 catches for 312 yards and two scores last year, but only eight this year, but considering how bad Illinois' offense has been, it really can't be that surprising.

#96, Wisdom Onyegbule: A few weeks ago, we saw Knowledge Timmons lose in the Penn State name poll. Some were disappointed. Knowledge is an awesome first name. Well, people, if you felt slighted by Knowledge's loss, well, Wisdom's your guy. First off, very similar first name concept. Now, swap out "Timmons" with "Onyegbule", and you've got a win win. That, my friends, is wisdom.

Wisdom redshirted last year, and saw his first game action a few weeks ago against Michigan, assisting on a sack.

and my pick for the winner...

#85, Whitney Mercilus: If my name was Whitney Mercilus, I'd do two things every day: first off, I'd be angry that my name was Whitney, because that's a last name, as evidenced by Eli Whitney, and, well, anybody ever to be named Whitney. 

Then, having done that, I'd contemplate showing mercy. But would I? HELL NO. My last name would be pronounced MERCILESS. And therefore, even if all I know about humanity were to dictate that I was in a situation that deserved mercy, you can be sure as all hell that I would not. WHITNEY MERCILUS. A great football name too. Now, if middle name was "The", I would begin to worship him.

Whitney is a redshirt freshman defensive tackle who has seen a decent amount of tick, having played in eight games and recorded two sacks. 

So, yeah, hit the poll, people. More later.

Hey, yo, new layout! Hope you dudes like it, it's mad shiny and whatnot, so, obviously, I'm pleased.

Also, congratulations to Christian Kuntz, who won possibly the deepest name of the week poll thus far with 26 votes, holding off Tariq Tongue and Knowledge Timmons with their 11 and 17 votes respectively. However, Tariq and Knowledge certainly have their spots in the Lorenzo Seaberry III Living Memorial Name Runners-Up Hall of Fame.

Anyways, the runners-up: cornerback Collin Sleeper (ironically, not a sleeper pick), sophomore defensive end LeBron Daniel (who has the unfortunate distinction distinction of being from Cleveland and named LeBron, and also having a first name for a last name), wide out JoJo Pregont, and wide receiver James Hurt (JAMES HURT!)

On to the nominees:

#91, Broderick Binns: I only saw one of the Lord of the Rings movies, so I can neither confirm nor deny that there were black hobbits. But if there was one, his name woulda been Broderick Binns. No doubt.

Broderick is a sophomore and has started every game at defensive end for the Hawkeyes, recording 4 sacks and 6.5 tackles for loss, and, somewhat oddly, leading the team in pass breakups with 8. He had one of the game-saving kick blocks in the Northern Iowa game, so, that's Brod.

#27, Jewel Hampton: You could go one of two ways if your name is Jewel: you could become a nonthreatening female pop singer, or you could spend your entire life moping about how your parents named you a name that isn't a name, but is, in fact, a thing you put on a necklace.

Hampton chose neither, and is instead a decent running back, doing the whole short-yardage thing last year and putting up seven touchdowns as a true freshman last year. Unfortunately, Jewel got injured before the season and hasn't seen the field for the Hawkeyes.

#23, Paki O'Meara: Oh, where to start with good ol' Paki. 

First off, I cannot decipher Paki's origin as hard as I try. O'Meara is an Irish name, but Paki is a name believed to have been taken from little microscopic bacteria that fell from a asteroid from Mars. I really don't have much more to elaborate on. 

Paki is a junior and the second member of an exceptionally talented name crew at running back. He's seen sparing action in the past two seasons, running for 23 yard against Maine last year, and is breaking into the lineup now with all of Iowa's running back injuries. He caught a pass for 14 yards last week against Indiana, and had two rushes for only two yards as well. 

#7, Marvin McNutt: The name McNutt is just such a silly last name. Maybe it's just me who thinks this, but if my name was Marvin McNutt, I'd walk around everywhere with a huge smile on my face. It's probably just me.

Heh. McNutt.

Marvin was a quarterback when he redshirted last year, but is a pretty decent wide receiver. He's not the go-to target, but he's brought down four touchdowns thus far, including a 92-yard game changer in a 155-yard outing last week against Indiana. Despite only starting four games, he's second on the team with 456 yards receiving.

And my pick for the winner...

# 43, Pat Angerer: An angerer. A person whose job is to anger others. An equivalent name would be Greg Pisseroffer, or Steve Guywhotellsraciallyinsensitivejokestopeopleofthatraceforthesolepurposeofprovokingthemerer. And he's a linebacker. Which is probably the most angering position possible. 

Not just a linebacker, but a damn good one: Pat was second-team all-Big Ten last year, and will most likely be first-team this year. He has the most tackles on a defense that's been murdering opponents, not to mention a pick and two forced fumbles. He was on the Lott Trophy watch list at the beginning of the year, so, yeah. Angerer.

Vote or die!