Sunday, February 07, 2010

SC6 Opens It's Super Bowl Coverage With 'Who Dat Done Started Who Dat?'


About six hours left until the big game, so we thought we'd wet your whistle, and give you a few stories that you might not get anywhere else..... We all know the Saints' unofficial motto is 'Who Dat?' Actually the NFL now owns the rights to the term, but we'll avoid calling them money-grubbing scumbags for today, and just focus on finding out where Who Dat came from....




Liek most things, it was a term used locally in Louisiana in the 1800's. The first known reference to it can be traced to a song by E.E. Rice, called 'Who Dat Say Chicken In Dis Crowd?' In the late 1800's. During the jazz and big band era's high point in New Orleans in the 1920's and 30's, many bands used 'Who Dat?' to be a go-between sing-along with the audience. The rest was entirely made up, but 'Who Dat?' was always the lead-in? For example.... I'd say 'Who Dat Thinks SC6 Sucks?', and you'd reply 'We Dat Think SC6 Sucks!!!" Follow? And so it sat in anonymity locally for decades...... til 1983.





Back then, many of the local schools teams used Who Dat before a game, and former New York Met and local sports reporter Ron Swoboda covered a game for St. Augustine High in 1983, when the Saints started out 4-2, and dreamed of the Super Bowl. The team chanted 'Who dat say they gonna beat St. Aug? Who Dat? Who Dat?' Swoboda got it on tape, played it on TV, and it caught like wildfire. Soon, a local duo wrote a parody to 'When the Saints Go Marching In' with Who Dat, and the song took off too...





Of course, the Saints fell apart that year, but Who Dat always bubbled under the surface, rising up whenever New Orleans fielded a good squad. Now, 'Who Dat' is everywhere, and it's become a sports lexicon, right up there with 'Dem Bums', 'Cowboy Up' , 'You Gotta Believe' and 'I Shit You Not'..... Well, MAYBE that last one hasn't caught on....





www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLCy46NWO4s



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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

To quote Charlie Brown "AAAUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!"