Can Vincent Outscore Norman and Elbert?

How can you not like a football team with a backfield of Boomer and Ickey?

This is what the Cincinnati Bengals will bring to Sunday’s AFC playoff game against the Raiders at the Coliseum--a couple of non-fictional characters inspired by Dan Jenkins, by way of Damon Runyon.

Sometimes I wonder what my parents would have done had I suddenly dumped my given name and adopted an alias, the way certain football players do.

Boomer Downey.

Ickey Downey.

Hmmm. It does have a certain ring to it.

(What’s the old joke about Quasimodo? “The face isn’t familiar, but the name rings a bell.”)

Names have been a source of endless fascination to me. I remember a time when the most famous leading men in Hollywood had names like Errol and Spencer and Humphrey. A couple of decades later, they had names like Rock and Elvis and Tab.

Today, perhaps the two biggest box-office stars in the world are men named Arnold and Sylvester.

Goes to show you, it’s the person who counts, not the name. Aspiring actresses, authors or artists probably dream up romantic pseudonyms such as Monique Mount Saint Helena de Croissant. But one of the most successful actresses alive is regular old Meryl Streep. Or, as she was known in her college days--not many people know this--Ickey Streep.

More than just a couple of the football players who will set foot on the Coliseum field Sunday go by a bogus first name.

For example, there is Bo Jackson of the Raiders, who is listed on his birth certificate as Vincent.

Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with the name Vincent. The Raiders even have have a backup quarterback by that name. And I don’t know why Bo prefers Bo, except to assume that nobody would comprehend the meaning of an advertising campaign bearing the slogan: “Vince Don’t Know Diddley.”

For those who do not know the origin of Mr. Jackson’s nickname, I quote herewith from “Bo Knows Bo,” his best-selling autobiography:

“I was tough as a wild boar. They called me Bo’-hog, which is a Southern term for a wild boar, and then they shortened it to Bo. They also called me the Little Nappy-Haired Rock Chunker, which they shortened to Nap.”

Which is better than shortening it to Chunk, I suppose.

Anyhow, now you know how close we came to having a world-famous two-sport athlete, Nap Jackson.

As for this “Boomer” Esiason person, quarterback of the Bengals, perhaps you have heard the punch line of his commercial endorsement, wherein he appeals to the public not to call him “Norman.”

It is all in good fun, and not the least bit insulting to the quarterback’s father, Norman Julius Esiason Sr., a man who had nobody else to thank/blame for his son’s nickname.

After all, he gave it to him before he was born.

As the senior Esiason explained: “Our first two children were girls. My wife’s third pregnancy was different, because the baby kept kicking all the time. I said: ‘This can’t be a girl. This has to be a boomer.’

“In my day, when I played football, the punter of the team was always called the boomer. So, when my son-to-be started kicking, my friends already were coming over and asking: ‘How’s Boomer?’ ‘What’s new with the Boomer?’ ”

With Ickey Woods, thankfully, the story is somewhat different.

After all, I would hate to think that the Bengal running back got his nickname before he was born because his mother thought he was ickey.

The Fresno-born baby was christened Elbert. He had a brother whose name I don’t know--maybe it was Siskel--but every time his brother tried to pronounce his name, it came out:

“Eee-eee. Eee-eee.”

Evidently, this reminded other members of the Woods family of a cartoon character called “Ickey.” And that’s the name that--if you will pardon the expression--stuck. Ickey stuck.

Personally, I am partial to NBC-TV sportscaster Don Criqui’s nickname of Woods’ nickname. He calls him “the Ickster.”

I also am amused by the possibility that some day somebody in his broadcast booth will refer to the sportscaster as Ickey Criqui.

Most of the remaining players in Sunday’s playoff game go by their actual names. Cincinnati defensive end Skip McClendon’s real name is Kenneth. New Zealand-born Raider linebacker Riki Ellison once went by the name Riki Gray. Elvis Patterson of the Raiders probably has had days when he wished somebody would call him Skip or Riki or Ickey.

I remember a Phil Foster comedy routine from the 1960s in which he complained that football players in his younger days had rugged names such as Bronko Nagurski or Red Grange, but now they had cute little names like Milton Plum and Y.A. Tittle.

As for me, I’m just glad that the name of my favorite baseball player was never mispronounced when he was a kid. Otherwise, I might have spent my entire childhood rooting for somebody named Ickey Mantle.