The Notre Dame...Blue Comets?

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish nickname is not just one of the most recognizable in all of college sports but is one of the most iconic of any sports team worldwide. Imagine for a second though that instead of it being "Fighting Irish" that it instead was something incredibly lame.

That was nearly the case almost 100-years ago when Notre Dame's football team still traveled to play any marquee opponent they could but didn't carry an official nickname.

A few of the unofficial nicknames spoke to Notre Dame's traveling ways. Rockne's Ramblers, Rockne's Rovers, and the Rambling Irish were just a few of those.

Notre Dame brass didn't like those names though because the belief was they made the football players sound like they were always traveling and never in class.

Enter Francis Wallace, a former Notre Dame student and press agent for Knute Rockne. After graduating in 1923, Wallace began working as a sports writer in New York.

Wallace noticed these nicknames being used in the New York papers and was well aware what the administrators back in South Bend thought of them. His solution?

Start calling Notre Dame's football team the "Blue Comets".

According to Murray Sperber's Shake Down the Thunder: The Creation of Notre Dame Football from 1993, Wallace created this nickname based on Notre Dame's blue uniforms and quick offense.

Needless to say, the nickname worked about as well as a Tyrone Willingham gameplan against USC.

By 1925 Wallace had already moved on from the Blue Comets disaster and instead starting referring to the football team as the "Fighting Irish". When Wallace moved to the New York Daily News in 1927 he found a significantly bigger audience that he used Fighting Irish with.

Not long after Notre Dame's administration would respond to a mailed question about the use of "Fighting Irish" essentially saying that it's an honor to have the fight of the Irish, regardless of ones ethnicity.

And hence, Fighting Irish wound up sticking.

In case you needed proof that not all ideas are good ideas, there's further proof.