How 4th round pick Elijah Sarratt got his nickname 'Waffle House'

Somewhere along the way, we lost the plot when it comes to sports nicknames. In yesteryear, we had monikers like Oil Can Boyd, Too Tall Jones and Human Rain Delay Mike Hargrove. However, in more recent generations nicknames were just replaced by abbreviations and initials- D. Will, I-Rod, A-Rod, KD etc. Ah, we used to be a proper country with proper sports nicknames!

Well, the 115th overall pick in the NFL Draft, Elijah "Waffle House" Sarratt, is starting to bring it back. The Baltimore Ravens took Waffle House, a big, productive wide receiver, in the fourth round out of Indiana on Saturday. If you're wondering how Sarratt earned this very distinctive nickname, it goes back to his James Madison days. Waffle House was one of the many players who moved with coach Curt Cignetti from JMU to IU.

And the credit for the moniker apparently belongs to his father, Donnie.

“He’s open right now,” Donnie Sarratt once said during an interview with the Big Ten Network's The Journey, according to the Daily Hoosier. Because Sarratt, like Waffle House, is always open.

There is actually a more scientific component to this too. The Waffle House Index is an informal but still helpful metric for determining the severity of a storm, and what level of disaster recovery efforts might be required after is subsides.

The scale is as follows:

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.