For Historical Reference

The Fighting Irish

Last Friday marked the 100th anniversary of the University of Notre Dame earning their badass nickname: the Fighting Irish. From the Way Back Files dated May 17 to 19, 1924, when the rotting pile of human garbage known as the Ku Klux Klan decided to rally in South Bend, Indiana. The pathetic hate-mongers came to town thinking they could intimidate Catholics.

Notre Dame’s football team, led by the legendary Knute Rockne, was tearing up the field back then. And the Klan? Well, those cowardly, cross-burning clowns just couldn't handle that a bunch of Catholics were dominating their precious college football. So, these morons gathered outside the Golden Dome, waving their stupid flags for a three-day festival of idiocy, complete with parades, speeches, dances, and, of course, their favorite: violent intimidation.

They weren't ready for Notre Dame’s response. The mostly Irish Catholic student body across the street had no intention of rolling over. Despite Father Matthew Walsh, the university president and a World War I vet, urging the students to stay put, they were ready to get busy.

When the Klan rolled into South Bend, hundreds of Notre Dame students marched out to greet them. At first, they even had some fun with it, offering to help the Klansmen find lodging and food, only to lead them down dark alleys or right out of town. But then things took a turn. One dim-witted Klan leader decided to pull a gun on a student trying to take down their unholy cross of lights. And then the shit hit the fan.

The students went full throttle. They grabbed whatever they could find – including, and I shit you negative, potatoes from a local stand – and hurled them at the Klan’s tacky cross, taking out almost every bulb. Then, quarterback Harry Stuhldreher, one of the “Four Horsemen,” launched a perfect shot, a potato soaring 40 feet to knock out the final light. He dimmed the last unholy glow and sent those white-hooded rats scurrying.

The next day, Notre Dame’s students faced the Klan again and handed them another defeat, solidifying their new nickname. National papers latched onto it: the Fighting Irish had emerged going 2 and 0 against the Klan on the weekend. Todd Tucker, a Notre Dame alum, wrote a book about that epic weekend, “Notre Dame vs. The Klan,” if you want more details.

Then, seemingly just to add glorious insult to divine injury, Rockne and his boys finished that year with a perfect 10-0 season. The Klan? They crumbled, especially after their sleazebag leader D.C. Stephenson got pinched for rape and murder.

It took a few more years for Father Walsh to officially embrace the nickname, but he did, and that’s how the Fighting Irish came to be.