It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before the National Football League tried to muscle in and claim ownership of “Who Dat?”, the chant that fans of the New Orleans Saints use to celebrate their team. It’s short for the long version, “Who dat say dey gonna beat them Saints?”
Now, the NFL, which prohibits people from using Super Bowl (note: Super Bowl! Super Bowl! Super Bowl! Come and get me, coppers!) is turning its lawyers loose in New Orleans.
Says Elie Mystal at the “Above the Law” tabloid:
So let’s be clear — the NFL claims it owns a chant of ungrammatical pidgin English that can’t even be pronounced properly without using a Bobby Boucher accent. The NFL doesn’t have what they call “the social skills.”
“The NFL has a curious way of crushing the life out of anything that could even slightly siphon a dollar away from their clever system of unlimited revenue potential and fixed labor costs,” Mystal says.
The NFL may be on solid legal ground, but who wants to be the one to go tell these people?
Just in case the Vikings ever get far enough for it to matter, we should figure out who owns “Skol Vikings?”