For several years, Brown he would occasionally cite an alternate history of the team name. He claimed that the second name-the-team contest yielded the name "Brown Bombers," after then-world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis, whose nickname was "The Brown Bomber." According to this version, Brown wanted his team to have a nickname befitting a champion, and felt the nickname "Brown Bombers" was apropos. The name was reportedly shortened to simply "Browns." This alternate history of the name was even supported by the team as being factual as recently as the mid-1990s, and it continues as an urban legend. However, Paul Brown never held fast to the Joe Louis story, and later in his life admitted that it was invented in part because of his wariness of having the team being named after him. The Browns and the NFL now both support the position that the team was indeed named after Paul Brown.