More trivia: origin of the wheel group

[Gary W. Swearingen]

Bill Moran <wmoran at potentialtech.com> writes:

> Does anyone know why the wheel group is called "wheel"?  I mean, why not
> "admins" or something like that.  "wheel" certainly is a cryptic name for
> the administrators group.  Anyone have any idea why it's called "wheel"?

Seems obvious to me.  "Big wheel" was slang for "one who calls the
shots" or "VIP" as long as I can remember.  And "wheel" was common
slang for "big wheel".  Some sys admin must have seen sys admins as
qualifying.  Why "big wheel" had that meaning, I can only guess, but I
suspect it came from horsey days when people's importance was
pretty-well correlated with the size of their vehicle's wheels.