UCF kicker Colton Boomer has the name, and leg, for today's college game | KEN WILLIS

Worked the brain to the bone and just can’t find a better fitting name for an athlete.

Baseball had a couple of guys named Power, but neither was a perfect fit — Ted Power was a pitcher with modest strikeout totals; Vic Power was a first baseman who topped out at 16 homers.

Quarterback Willie Thrower played just one NFL game, for the Bears in the ’50s, before heading north for a few seasons in the CFL.

But Colton Boomer, the UCF sophomore who kicked four field goals, including two over 50 yards and the walk-off winner from 40 last Saturday to beat Boise, might just be the perfect athlete with the perfect name at the perfect time.

As a freshman out of Lake Mary last year, Boomer hit 14 of 15 attempts, and so far this year he’s perfect. And while you might not be at the very front end of this craze, you can still be closer to the front than back there with the eventual bandwagon jumpers.

That’s right, you can buy Colton Boomer merch.

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You can buy Boomer caps, shirts, hoodies … all the normal stuff, and frankly, why not?

You should urge anyone in any entertainment field to “make hay” while the making is good, but particularly a placekicker.

Perhaps only high-level golfers are more susceptible to having their games go arse-over-tincup due to the most minuscule of flaws. A placekicker’s lifespan seems to have little middle ground, it’s either very long or a sudden, early flame-out.

So Colton Boomer — consciously or not — is selling things and hopefully banking some set-aside money for the rainy days that dampen the majority of kicking careers. In fact, for $19.99 through the Rock Em brand, you can buy Boomer’s socks, complete with his face and the slogan that made him a semi-folk hero even before he started boomin’ in Orlando: “Kickin’ bombs and kissin’ your moms.”

That line made it under Boomer’s picture in his Lake Mary High senior yearbook. Getting that one through might’ve been his finest bit of needle-threading prior to last Saturday night in Boise.

Now, let’s thin out the ol’ cyber mailbag. The emails have been pouring in. In fact, as they say, a few just poured in this week …

HEY, WILLIE!

So good to have your football column back in the paper. Several chuckles today. Thanks and keep up the good work.

GREG

HEY, GREG!

Chuckles can cut both ways, you know. It’s the inadvertent chuckle we’re trying to avoid here.

HEY, WILLIE!

Thanks for keeping some college tradition by continuing your college picks and history lesson at the end of your piece.

STEVE

HEY, STEVE!

Tradition, schmadition, where’s my NIL deal?

HEY, WILLIE!

Has it ever happened? Our football teams — college and pro — all won.

’Noles, ’Canes, Knights, Hatters, Gators and Wildcats. Good deal.

And very impressive that all our NFL teams won, and did it on the road. I’ll leave it to the guru (you) to do the research since I don’t get paid for that.

BIZARRO RICH

HEY, RICH!

New around here? Asking me to do your research when I only do my own at the point of a bayonet?

But for the record, as reflected below, Florida Atlantic lost to Ohio U and ruined the potential for last week’s clean sweep on the Pigskin Peninsula.

Rank & File

The weekly ranking of Florida’s seven big-league college football programs, based on results versus expectations, current trends and the barometric pressure under Nick Saban’s red collar.

1. FSU (2-0). This week: at Boston College. Remember when, even in good times for FSU, BC would give the Seminoles fits? This ain’t one of them years. The pick: Noles by 18.

2. Miami (2-0). This week: Bethune-Cookman at home, Thursday. Tyler Van Dyke’s five TD passes in last week’s win over Texas A&M reminded everyone how good he was in 2021 before injuries hobbled his ’22 season. The pick: Canes by 40.

3. UCF (2-0). This week: Villanova at home. Enjoy this one because next week the Big 12 schedule arrives and the degree of difficulty ratchets northward. The pick: Without the starting QB, Knights by just three TDs and two Boomers.

4. FIU (2-1). This week: at UConn. The Panthers have won two of their first three games for the first time in five years. Six years since three of the first four. Might as well end that skid, too. The pick: Panthers by 6.

5. Florida (1-1). This week: Tennessee at home. This is your own lyin’ eyes against a serious trend — Vols haven’t won in Gainesville since the Zookian Era. Strictly a Mr. Hunch Special here. The pick: Gators by 3.

6. FAU (1-1). This week: at Clemson. Owls finally get the rematch, 17 years after losing 54-6 at Clemson. Thanks but no thanks, though that $1.2 million sacrificial-lamb payment will buy a lot of ice packs. The pick: Tigers by 38.

7. USF. This week: Alabama at home. This game was announced four years ago and is part of a three-gamer. USF gets ’Bama in Tampa this year, then travels to Tuscaloosa in ’24 and ’26. Meanwhile, this isn’t the best week to see that red wave rolling down I-75. The pick: Tide by a merciful 30.

The (other) Picks

Where Morgantown camps out in northern West Virginia, you can nearly-bout reach across the Pennsylvania line with a roadside jerky-on-a-stick — and, I reckon, some have.

Pittsburgh sits there in southwestern Pennsylvania, an hour north of Morgantown, give or take, depending on whether you’re taking the Porsche or the ’92 F-250 — take the Porsche because, Lord Mr. Ford, who can afford those diesel prices these days?

Anyway, the football team from Morgantown (West Virginia University) plays football Saturday against the football team from Pittsburgh (the Panthers, who answer to “Pitt”).

It’s called the Backyard Brawl and it dates back to Marconi’s invention of the radio — that would be 1895, but no, Guglielmo didn’t call the football game due to contractual conflicts with ESPN, or something like that.

Ain’t it nice, with all the change in college football, we still have a game where the winning team’s fans are likely to celebrate by burning furniture along Frat Row?

Just kidding. They’ll also burn it on the corner of Elm and Main — Mountaineers by 6.

Elsewhere: LSU over Mississippi State; Penn State large over Illinois; Georgia by 24 over S. Carolina; Duke beats Northwestern by 20 SAT points; Michigan State phones it in and loses to Washington by 12; Ole Miss big over Ga. Tech; Arkansas over BYU, 52-49; Purdue beats Syracuse; Colorado by 30 over Colorado State; and just south of Boston and east of Dedham, the Colonels of Curry College over the visiting MIT Engineers by 10.

BTW: Curry was originally called the School of Elocution and Expression, then simply the School of Expression (in 1885) before eventually taking the name of an early founder, Samuel Silas Curry, who was damn near famous. How? Glad you asked.

The school’s first chancellor was none other than Alexander Graham Bell, famous for inventing the robo-call. Turns out, according to some literature, Sam Curry was on hand when Bell’s phone invention first worked, but it was cohort Tom Watson (no, not that one) who was in the other room and on the other end of the line.

Some rearranging of seats, and that famous line might’ve been, “Mr. Curry, come here, I want to see you,” to which Sam might’ve replied, “Why don’t you just text me?”

— Reach Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: UCF PK Colton Boomer has perfect NIL name; 'Noles, 'Canes top rankings