Notre Dame Football: Adding Nameplates Brings Fighting Irish into 21st Century

Notre Dame has gone against the grain in the Champs Sports bowl against Florida State.

For the first time in a long time, the Fighting Irish played a football game with the last name of each player displayed on the back of their jersey.

It was long been the tradition of Notre Dame to keep the names off each individuals jersey in an ode to football being a complete team effort. 

It’s about time.

Notre Dame is a school that is obsessed with their traditions and way of doing things (like refusing to enter a BCS football conference), and finally the Irish have entered the rest of the college football world in the 21^st century. 

The team had nameplates during the Dan Devine and Gerry Faust era, but has gone without them ever since aside from the Hawaii Bowl in 2008 and 2011 Sun Bowl.

South Bend is chalk full of tradition, but have been slow to adjust to the new era of collegiate athletes. It’s an all about me sort of world now and the fans need to be reminded of the running back’s name over and over again. How else will they get noticed by NFL scouts and coaches?

Regardless of if you think Notre Dame players are “above this”, it’s a cold, hard reality of sports now a days and the overall concept of a team has been diminished. The Fighting Irish are not the exception.

Traditions don’t mean as much as they used to and while it’s impossible to figure out what a 17-year-old is thinking, placing the nameplates in the back of the beautiful blue jerseys is only going to help recruiting.

Let’s hope this is the beginning of something new for the Irish and not another one game experiment.