By Jay Busbee

On the whole, NASCAR's nicknames suck. Sure, you've got "The Intimidator," which might just be the best nickname in sports history, and Tony "Smoke" Stewart, one of the finest handles of any athlete today, but beyond that? Not much. Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s nickname is ... Junior. Jeff Gordon? The "Rainbow Warrior." (Ooooh, scary!) So we're taking it upon ourselves here -- and shamelessly ripping off our colleague MJD over at Shutdown Corner -- to start handing out nicknames to the moniker-deprived. Post your thoughts and suggestions below, and tomorrow, we'll vote on the best of the bunch.

We start right at the top, with current points leader Jeff Burton. Burton's a tough guy to hang a nickname on, being that pretty much all he does is win and race well without a whole lot of flash and dazzle. Now, we could go with the cheesy name abbreviation of J-Burt, but that's just stupid. Or we could go with the Chris Bermanism of "Jeff 'Ernie and' Burton," but that's not exactly going to inspire either fear or admiration.