Johnson has it all, except a nickname that is suitable

He's won four consecutive series championships, is closing fast on 50 career race victories, and is nowhere close to finished. By the time he slips out of that blue and silver No. 48 car for good, Jimmie Johnson will likely have rewritten a large chunk of the NASCAR record book, and established himself as one of the four or five greatest drivers ever to compete on America's premier stock-car circuit. And yet, there's one area where he lags well behind the rest of the field.

The man needs a nickname.

Everybody else has one. There's a Rowdy and a Happy, an Ironman and an Iceman, a Smoke and a Smokey. There's a Junebug and a Jaws, a Mayor and a Herman, a Franchise and a Four-Time and a Sliced Bread. There's a Front Row Joe and a Million Dollar Bill, a Gentleman Ned and a Handsome Harry, a Mr. Excitement and a Cousin Carl. There's a Cotton and a Buckshot, a Rocketman and a Fireball. There's a Big Bud and a Little Bud, a Tiny and a Red, and of course an Intimidator and a Silver Fox and a King.

And then there's Jimmie. Plain ol' Jimmie.

Something needs to be done about that. Oh, sure, there's this "Double J" moniker that's been attached to Johnson, which isn't bad -- if you're someone who scratches records or lays down funky beats. For a race car driver? Not quite. Plus, it's terribly ordinary. Anyone with the right initials can call themselves "Double J," regardless of what they do for a living or how adept they are at it. It conveys nothing of speed or danger, gives us no hint of the man's accomplishments or personality, things the best nicknames do. Johnson needs something that not only suits him, but expresses a degree of authority, and in one or two words sums up the hold he has over the rest of the Sprint Cup tour.

Of course, that's easier said than done. Nicknames usually happen naturally -- Randy Lajoie one day pegging a then-up-and-coming Joey Logano as "Sliced Bread," Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s family members and close friends referring to him as "Junebug," Tony Stewart earning the "Smoke" moniker in his early U.S. Auto Club days not because of the way he smoked the field but because of the way he smoked his tires. Someone says it, almost without thinking, and it sticks. That's how the members of David Reutimann's race team ended up calling him "The Franchise," a nickname at first meant to be facetious, but which took on new meaning after he won last year's Coca-Cola 600, the first victory for Michael Waltrip Racing. (Continued)