Eye Chart

With the National Spelling Bee grabbing headlines, the San Francisco 49ers website has a hilarious video of 49ers players taking a stab at spelling the name of new teammate Nnambi Asomugha. Some didn't even make an attempt. The task was too tough. Those that attempted didn't get much further than a few letters. It was both funny and sad. I've followed Asomugha since his days at Cal so saying and spelling his name has become fairly natural. The double N's to start his first name was the toughest to grasp. Quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the only player in the video to strike gold with the spelling of A-s-o-m-u-g-h-a. That ability must have come from his stellar schooling in Turlock, Ca.

Football players with names of African origins have been popping up with greater frequency since the '90s. It's a great thing. Anything to make a group more diverse is a great thing. Those names were often a chore to say and pretty much impossible to spell. One of the first that I faced at Cal was one of the most difficult. Iheanyi Uwaezouke was a very good receiver for the Golden Bears from 1992-95. His name is pronounced exactly like it is spelled. That's probably not much help. uh-HAH-nee' 'uh-WAY-zoo-KAY is simply fun to say. Cal's usual broadcasters eventually learned to master the name. They had to as Uwaezouke frequently made big plays. When Cal hit the national scene, as they did for the 1993 Alamo Bowl against Iowa, broadcasters must have been terrified. They likely secretly prayed that the receiver never touched the ball. Those prayers failed when Uwaezouke scored a touchdown in the bowl game. The Cal players didn't fair much better than the media. They didn't even try to work out the name. They simply called their teammate "Eye chart." Thanks to football players like Iheanyi Uwaezouke and Nnambi Asomugha at Cal, I was able to get a little bit ahead of the curve with these beautiful names. It's nice to broaden your horizons.