The following post by Argent Towers in the limerick thread caught my interest:
Finding myself lacking in knowledge on the subject of Mr. Rentzel, but my interest tickled, I swiftly directed my browser to the relevant Wikipedia page to expand my horizon. There, I learned about how Mr. Rentzel in 1970 had been arrested for indecent exposure to a 10 year old girl and sacked from his team, the Dallas Cowboys. The same article also makes the claim that “cyclist Lance Armstrong was named after the wide receiver.”
A quick look at Lance Armstrong’s wiki page informs us, and other sources back this up, that the cyclist was born in 1971. At just the time, then, of this apparently sordid affair.
Well, I think to myself: “Oh come on! Bollocks.” However, several sources, including an interview with Armstrong’s mother, Linda, quoted in this article in USAToday, back up the story. According to the article:
“She named the baby Lance — after Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Lance Rentzel. ‘Yes, I know Rentzel came to a bad end [convicted in 1970 of indecent exposure], but back then he was about to start another great season,’ she says.”
I’m not American, I don’t really follow sports at all, and I wasn’t born in 1971. Therefore, my knowledge about the situation is non-existent. I have no idea to what extent Lance Rentzel is famous in the States today, if he’s a household name or just some obscure memory, and I certainly don’t know how he was perceived at the time, how big a star he was, and how big a deal this affair was. However, I am curious as to why seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong finds himself named after someone whose main claim to fame certainly *appears *to be sticking it out to prepubescent girls (well, one prepubescent girl, at any rate). For those of you who know, what was the public opinion on Mr. Rentzel at the time when Armstrong was born (September 1971)? Did people feel he was hard done by? Was he still popular and respected, especially in Dallas, where, indeed, Lance Armstrong is from? Or is the cyclist’s moniker the result of some very sick humor indeed on the part of his mother?