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This college football player was destined for a life in sports.
Gideon Lampron, an FCS All-American linebacker who transferred from Dayton to Bowling Green this year, has a middle name so eye-opening that it doesn’t seem real.
But his sports-crazed dad, Marty, did in fact name his youngest son Gideon ESPN Lampron — without his wife’s approval — and the name has gone viral in the wake of his interstate transfer.
Originally, Marty’s wife, Jennifer, wanted Gideon’s middle name to be Xavier. Marty wanted the middle name to be ESPN, pronounced ES-PEN, according to the Dayton Daily News. Jennifer shot it down.
“Then she delivers Gideon, and she’s out of it,” Marty told the paper in September, “and the nurse comes for me to sign the birth certificate. When I signed it, I literally printed ESPN in capital letters. She was out cold when I did it. When she woke up, I told her I did it, and she said, ‘No, you didn’t.’ She didn’t realize I did it. She wasn’t happy with me.”
Marty was determined to have one of his kids have a sports-inspired name. The Boston native struck out when he tried it with the couple’s first son, Gabriel, who is 10 years older than Gideon.
“I went for months trying to talk my wife into letting me name him Larry Bird,” Marty told the Dayton Daily News. “It didn’t go well.”
Gideon, a standout at Keystone HS in Lagrange, Ohio, didn’t bring up his middle name often as a kid but now leans into it; his X handle is @EspnGideon, his bio page on the Bowling Green website lists his full name, Gideon ESPN Lampron, and the personal section of his bio reiterates that his middle name is, in fact, ESPN.
“I love it,” he told the paper. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think it’s great. My dad had big plans for me, apparently, from the time I was born. So I just want to make him proud. My dad’s favorite thing on the planet is watching his kids play sports. I want to be able to deliver for him and make him and my family and the hometown proud.”
English (US)