New Orleans Saints On The Road For a Showdown:The Who Dats Take On The Who Deys

This week as I was preparing for the next opponent on the New Orleans Saints schedule, I was brought back to the first game I attended this year. Back in August the family and I packed up and went to Canton, Ohio for the Hall of Fame Game as the Cincinnati Bengals took on the Dallas Cowboys.

At this point you are probably thinking I am a Bengals fan or maybe even a Cowboys fan who went to  see the current team get energized for the season as Emmitt Smith was inducted into this year’s Hall of Fame class.

Makes sense, but wrong on both accounts.

The only reason was that I am a card carrying member of the Who Dat Nation. I was not going to miss our first ever inductee, former linebacker Rickey Jackson receive his honor. Days of events and parties culminated with the game on Sunday to kick this year’s NFL off the season.

For the game, I did what any traveling Saints fan would do, I made a sign. It read, "Who Dat's love #57."

Normally this would not be a problem, however I was informed that I was spelling my sign wrong. When I glanced up I realized the voice that was speaking was attached to a Bengals jersey.

He informed me that it was "Who Dey, not Who Dat!"

Needless to say, this young man was on his way to being schooled on the origin of Who Dat. Truth is I barely scratched the surface of the issue as I told him that it was well before his beloved 1981 AFC Championship season.

Now that the game is here and the Who Dats will take on the Who Deys, I thought this would be as good a time as any to set the record straight. I am sure that the facts I will provide will help you make up your mind.

Oh, one more thing, if you wouldn't mind taking the poll question. Just for fun I would like to see what others think. The NFL weighed in last year too. They thought they had the right to WhoDat when paired with black and gold and a fleur de lis.

The NFL later sent out a statement stating that the term Who Dat is the fan’s of the New Orleans Saints.

Now that the Cincinnati Bengals fans still want to believe in a half hearted attempt at an argument be my guest. However I seem to recall years ago being taught by my elders that I was not entitled to my own facts but I was entitled to my own opinion.

And it is my opinion that the Cincinnati Bengals have been misinformed as to the authenticity of their Who Dey chant.

Many articles have been written about just which team started using the cheer first. With hours of research I have found a few key points that may just clear this issue up once and for all.

In 1981 the Bengals were on their way to a winning season. The fans were supporting their beloved team by chanting Who Dey, Who Dey, Who Dey think gonna beat dem Bengals followed by the retort back “Nobody!”

In 1983 the Saints were using the chant Who Dat, Who Dat, Who Dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints, Who Dat? Well there you have it, the Saints must have heard it when they played the Bengals in a previous meeting and brought it back to New Orleans thinking no one would notice.

Not quite the whole truth. According to the Bengal Jungle, the chant first popped up in November of 1981. Here is the quote from their history.  

“Rumors (It came from the Saints, it came from Alcorn State, it came from LSU)

Today you will learn how it got started, when it got started and where it traveled once it became popular. It started in November of 1981. And the following is the stepping stone of it’s arrival.”

Rebuttal fact, the Saints hosted the Bengals in the Superdome on October 25, 1981. The Saints handed the Bengals one of their three losses of the regular season. In case you are not familiar with my Saints history, we had yet to have a winning season since coming into the league in 1967.

The season before was so bad that we saw the emergence of the now infamous paper bags. So beating a team that was making a playoff push was for pride. We became spoilers of many a playoff team back then. The decision to draft Rickey Jackson was making an impact on opposing teams players as well as the fans of the New Orleans Saints.

I’ll go out on a limb (not really) and say that the Who Dat chant was used during that October meeting in the Superdome. I will go one step further and assure you that it was used as soon as the final seconds wound down leaving the Bengals with a pithy little ditty playing in their heads as they left the field.

Remember it was November 1981 when their version of Who Dey made its way to their home field, however the Who Dat chant had been in widespread usage during highschool and college football games in Southeastern Louisiana for the better part of 20 years. I do recall keeping up with St. Augustine Purple Knights as they made their way to the high school State football championship.

I remember seeing a story on the news about the upcoming match between the St Augustine Purple Knights and the Jesuit Blue Jays. The year was 1978 and for the first time the state championship game was to be held in the three years old Louisiana Superdome. There was a clip of the players riding in their bus after a game singing “Who Dat, who dat, who dat say gonna beat us Knights, Who dat."

Why the heck would I have such a memory of football? I was an eight year old little girl who should be playing with dolls not keeping up with football for Pete’s sake. But I was a daddy’s girl and dad watched a lot of football. That and the Louisiana State Championship game division 5A was once again going to be an all local and all Catholic League match up.

The point that I want to drive home is that it was 1978 when the Who Dat Chant was first heard in the Louisiana Superdome during a football game. On October 25,1981 the New Orleans Saints while playing on their home field the Louisiana Superdome, beat Chris Collingsworth’s  Bengals. The following week the Who Dey cheer makes it’s debut in Ohio.

Here’s what the New York Times had to say about the subject.

Who Dat

The chant of “Who dat? Who dat say they gonna beat deem” originated in minstrel shows and vaudeville acts in the late 1800s and early 1900s, then was taken up by jazz and big band folks in the 1920s and 1930s, became a familiar joke among soldiers in World War II, was used in early TV skits in the 1950s, then was adapted by Southern University and the public schools in New Orleans in the 1960s and 1970s and finally was adopted by Saints fans and the Saints in the late 1970’s.

Who Dey

Although the exact origin of the phrase is disputed, it had been made popular by 1981 in Bengals fans’ cheers for their team during their run to Super Bowl XVI. Some fans would do the chant and other fans would reply, “Nobody!” The cheer again gained national recognition in their 1988 appearance in Super Bowl XXIII. Due to the success of the Bengals team in the 2005 season, the chant is again gaining popularity. Different theories of the origin of the chant exist.

The Who Dey chant's first known use was by fans of the 1980 Cincinnati Bengals. While the origin of the chant is unsettled, one possible source for the chant is a 1980 commercial for Red Frazier Ford of Cincinnati, which used this tagline: “Who’s going to give you a better deal than Red Frazier?… Nobody!” Cincinnati fans who had seen the commercial many times may have just copied it when cheering.^[5]

Now I ask, just how does one make the leap from “Who’s gonna give you a better deal than Red Frazier? Nobody”  to  “Who dey! Who dey! Who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?

They do say that flattery is the sincerest form of flattery.

I’m going to make an educated guess and say that the Who Dey cheer sounds an awful lot like our Who Dat rallying cry especially while wearing a helmet.

At this point I would like to thank all of  the Bengals fans for making our boys feel right at home whenever you decide to break out in cheer.