Nicknames can be either a blessing or a curse, especially when they’re awarded so early in life.
As a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Colorado in the mid-1930s, a small-town boy named Byron White picked up a nickname from local Denver Post columnist Leonard Cahn during the annual Colorado-Denver freshman game that, for better or worse, stuck with him for the rest of his life.
Byron “Whizzer” White was christened after his freshman season, and the expectations that came with it were immediate. Despite a knee injury that derailed his sophomore season, White came back stronger in his junior season with All Rocky Mountain Conference honors.