The Booth Lusteg Award Winners

Here's the situation so far. In our efforts to name all the players in every number who have played in the New York Jets organization (that includes Titans, too), we have learned many things. Life is nasty, brutish and short, and nowhere is this more true than for a member of a football team's secondary. Also, aside from doing amazing things, football players also have funny names.

We're up to #24. So far, here are the winners of the Booth Lusteg Awards for Players in the New York Jets Organization With Funny-Sounding Names. No doubt we will have a grand prize winner some time before the end of my life. Some of these guys are going to sound really familiar to Jets fans, but then maybe some of you have never thought of their names before as inherently funny. A new schema is required. Life affords new perspectives on old joys.

These are in numerical order, with the name matching his number. Sadly, not every number afforded a funny name. You can decide for yourself which is the funniest so far:

#5 - Booth Lusteg (Our Founder)

#6 - Bubby Brister

#7 - Tom Tupa

#8 - Browning Nagle

#11 - Butch Songin

#12 - Howard "Hayseed" Stephens

#14 - Troy Taylor

#17 - Clyde "Lee" Grosscup

#19 - Dick Wood

#20 - Leander Knight

#21 - Treg Songy

#23 - Dick Felt

This isn't an exact science. You have to take several factors into account while deciding whether a name is funny or not, and even then, it can appear arbitrary. Certain tasteful restrictions do apply, though. A name should not be considered funny because it sounds, as Mario Cuomo used to say, "ethnic." Plus, it doesn't matter how your name sounds, if you have a certain degree of notoriety, your name just stops being funny. "Newt Gingrich" is funny today because Newt Gingrich has been revealed to be a hypocritical boob, but when he was Speaker of the House, his name wasn't funny - even when, as Garry Trudeau once pointed out, it sounded like a character from Dune. "Brett Favre" doesn't sound funny anymore, does it? Ah, but it should. It did once. Admit it. Even if it were pronounced correctly, it would still seem funny. Or French.

For example, take #15, Vito Parilli. His name does not automatically qualify as funny even though it conjures a character from My Cousin Vinny. That wouldn't be fair to Vito Parilli. However, it gets funnier when you consider that his nickname is "Babe." But even then, Babe Parilli is enough of a Jet legend such that he just doesn't qualify as outright funny. He was Namath's backup in '68, and members of that championship squad have automatic dispensation from Booth Lusteg (even #32 Emerson Boozer does, and it hurts to say that). Babe was an earlier standard-bearer NFL backup and a Boston Patriots starter. Therefore, his name is not funny. Neither is #21 "Don Odegard" funny even though he sounds like a character from Fargo. He did however qualify for initial consideration because the All-Time Jets Roster also listed his additional middle name of "Boyd." Say it all together and you have the very textbook description of aural cacophony.

Some names are funny because they carry a connotation that is unmistakably funny. Other names are funny because they don't even sound like human names. "Treg Songy" still wins the award over Don Odegard because "Treg Songy" sounds like a name that a five year-old would make up as he played kickoff return by himself in his backyard. "Here comes Treg Songy." Treg was also a 1987 replacement player, which makes him funny as a person, too. Except that now there's someone named "Trey Songz" who sings music with a silly name.

(Question: How did Treg Songy and Butch Songin end up playing for the same franchise more than twenty years apart? Coincidence??)

However, there are exceptions to the rules we mention. "Bubby Brister" will always be funny - maybe not in Denver where he played so well toward the end of his career, but in my heart, his name will always sound impossible, country-fried, and wonderfully American in the funniest sense. Say this phrase aloud: "God Bless You, Bubby Brister." See? It's a gut buster.

So what makes some other names funny? Interestingly enough, what makes one funny name funny does not guarantee the humor in another funny name. There are certain characteristics we identify as commonly funny. Alliterative names are funny. Apparently, first names with the letter "B" carry the funny gene. On the other hand, #19 Dick Wood and #23 Dick Felt are guaranteed laughs because their surnames offer a descriptive characteristic to the inherently funny first name. Dick Wood is also funny because his given name was "Malcolm."

"Troy Taylor," though not really funny per se, becomes funny when you consider that it sounds like a made-up football player's name. This becomes even funnier when you consider how short Troy Taylor's football career was (although maybe not so funny for Troy).

Howard "Hayseed" Stephens played for the New York Jets in #12 only a few years before Namath made the number famous for all of professional football. An edition of Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary published in the year he played for the Jets offers the following definition of his nickname:

hayseed n 1 a: seed shattered from hay b: clinging bits of straw and chaff from hay 2 pl hayseeds: BUMKIN, YOKEL

Number 20 continues to beguile and charm me, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because, unlike "Troy Taylor," "Leander Knight" just doesn't sound like a football player. I don't know. But see, that's another thing. Sometimes you just don't know why something's funny, and that's OK. For example, I find #17 funny not just because of his funny last name, but because his nickname is "Lee" and his given name is "Clyde." But that's not enough for a truly funny name; were that the case, we would be talking about the Jets former #17, David Clowney. No. The point is no one is prepared the unknown discomfort that Clyde "Lee" must have felt in school hearing his surname called aloud: Grosscup.

Finally, there is the in joke, the private humor we Jets fans feel with certain names. It's true that "Browning Nagle" could be considered a funny-sounding name, but there was actually a time when that name gave us a sense of hope and confidence, like when I saw rookie Browning Nagle quarterback the Jets to a victory against the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1992 Hall of Fame Game. However, fate can turn a name funny. His name is funny today because it expresses the self-deprecating sense of pessimistic hope we feel every time we believe that this is The draft pick who will turn the team around, or that this is The year where everything will be different. No, he's not. No, it's not. Vernon Gholsten suffers from the same problem.

And finally, look at the list one last time. You may not realize it, but five of the eleven names above were former New York Titans. Of the many, many names and numbers we have seen so far, names of Titan players are among the funniest. That is a staggering fact. This is at least evidence that the Jets organization has been around for a long while now, certainly as long as the AFL itself, such that arcane handles like "Butch" and "Dick" are out of fashion and therefore potentially funny. But when you take into account the fact that the New York Titans themselves were inherently funny as a football team, the potential realizations that result are practically limitless. (This means, by the way, that our honorary member of Booth Lusteg's solid crew is Harry Wismer, the Titans former owner - funnier even than "Sonny Werblin.") So, a funny team will also have players with funny names. Does everything in life happen for a reason? If yes, then Someone has a sense of humor. If not, then life itself remains a funny existential business indeed.