Football fans and champions of poor grammar alike are by now familiar with the phrase “Who Dat”, a rallying cry for the New Orleans Saints Football team. This phrase is a shortening of an originally longer chant popularized in the 80′s: “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?” which in English means “Who is it that might assert they would be better at Football than the Saints? Who is it? Who is it?” Although the true author of this quote is being contested, it is quite likely that there is an open position with their name on it at the San Francisco Chronicle.
Anyway, the Wall St. Journal is reporting that the NFL is now contesting ownership of the phrase “Who Dat” because their academic pursuits have become tiresome. The NFL asserted rights to the phrase through the Florida department of state earlier last week and subsequently issued cease and desist orders regarding the sales of merchandise with the phrase to many local businesses in New Orleans. I find it unfortunate that the NFL has time for these types of shenanigans particularly in a city whose economy, along with mastery of elementary English grammar, could still use a lot of help. I mean, can’t the NFL just let New Orleans have their confusing sayings to themselves?
Residents of New Orleans are rightfully pointing out that the NFL never cared much about the phrase when the Saints were losing, but now that there is money to be made putting “Who Dat” on a t-shirt, beer koozie, or Louisiana issued drivers licenses, they all of a sudden are claiming dat dey own dat phrase. Maybe they want it because it’s actually an acronym for John Madden’s favorite breakfast: Western Ham Omelette, Danish And Toast. Maybe they want it because they’re investors in the Dr. Seuss/Football Hybrid movie being produced by 20th Century Fox “Horton Hears a Who Dat” starring Hugh Jackman and Madonna. I’m not sure why the NFL wants to be the one who mispronounced something and then misspelled it when writing it out so badly, but this never would have happened in the XFL.
Who Dat knocking at the door? It’s greed, it’s someone more heartless than Jay Leno’s agent, it’s everything wrong with our legal system except that it is absent of anything Judge Judy related. Beyond that, it’s just an absolute joke and I hope the residents of NOLA find a way to stick it to the NFL, so I’ll leave you with some recommendations:
- Get someone on the team to step up and pull an Ochocinco by getting their last name legally changed to “Whodat” so that jerseys can once again be legally printed with the phrase on it.
- Designing merchandise with illustrations of hands performing the sign language version of “Who Dat” with an additional hand at the end featuring only a middle finger and then “NFL.”
- Changing the chant from “Who Dat” to “Qui est ce”, a rough French equivalent hearkening to the region’s French heritage and making the French feel good about someone speaking their language again.
- Coming up with an entirely new song which preserves the grammatically incorrect roots of the original, but takes it a step further:
Who dat being all malevolent?
Dat da NFL, Dat da NFL.
Who dat ruining a nice event?
Dat da NFL, Dat da NFL.
Who dat being like Ebeneezer Scrooge?
Dat da NFL, Dat da NFL.
Who dat acting like a big ol’ Douche?
Dat da NFL, Dat da NFL.
Who dat coming like a comic book villian,
Who dat likely to prostitute they own children,
Who dat struggling to complete easy mazes,
Who dat laying claim to grammatically incorrect phrases?
Dat da NFL, Dat da NFL.
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