Well his reputation seems to precede him in MP, but I'll point out that there is a nugget of wisdom in there that extends WELL beyond civ multiplayer.
Not all players with numbers in their names suck. Not all of any one naming style sucks. However, there are trends. People who use numbers that do not hold significance (IE slayerkill45 or noobshot1348) or crap like XXXshadowmikexxx tend to be pretty terrible. This trend does NOT include people who use numbers of actual game or reference significance in their names. Someone who intentionally has a number that shows the half life of a radioactive element (especially in certain games) or uses that number because it's their sports jersey number (some very good athletes play some online games), or other similar examples shouldn't be grouped with "alex0984".
Another fairly common class of terrible players are those who feel the need to associate their race/gender/anything about them that is not relevant to their game ability in their names, as if belonging to said group makes them better without skill of their own. You'll notice, for example, that your typical pro in say warcraft, civ, or any other game seems to lack names like "azn_sunshine5", "USA_danny", "Euro-pete" or some such nonsense. Again, not a 100% suckage rate, but you don't feel good when names like that come up in arranged team games like gears of war or DOTA in wc3.
As for names of GOOD players, I have less of a known pattern for that. The only thing I've noticed is that people who put a lot of effort or otherwise managed to use a name that is funny seem to be better than average, but not elite in my experience. Since I'm only elite in one, maybe two games (neither of which are civ, definitely madden is one), they beat me sometimes.
