Who Dat Gonna Beat Da Owners?

Who Dat Gonna Beat Da Owners?

In the latest display of “Big-Sports” hubris, the NFL is aggressively pursuing mom and pop Nawlins shops selling merchandize with the rather curious and parochial slogan “Who Dat.”

Wikipedia says, “The chant of “Who Dat?” originated in minstrel shows and vaudeville acts of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was then taken up by jazz and big band performers in the 1920s and 30s.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, St. Augustine High School claims the first New Orleans use of the phrase in a football context, back in 1972. (The full phrase is “Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints? Who Dat? Who Dat?” A mouthful that would have made pitcher-cum-sportscaster Dizzy Dean envious.)

No matter the etymology, the almighty NFL now owns the rights to the phrase as it relates to the New Orleans Saints — or at least it claims to. With the Saints finally in a “professional football national championship game” (I would have used the colloquial term for that game, “Super B***”, but the NFL owns that phrase too.) “Who Dat” now means real dough – and not the kind used to make beignets.

And where there is money to be made, “Big-Sports” is not far behind. Whether it is colleges foisting the BCS on fans, or individual schools only selling the choicest tickets to the biggest donors, or $8 for a “Bud” at Madison Square Garden where they can confiscate any food or drinks you bring from home, or $2,600 for a super-duper “best seat in the house” single-game ticket to Yankee Stadium, “Big-Sports” has taken avarice to levels only dreamed of by the founders of the games.

The list goes on and becomes more egregious each year. For years Wrigley Field had no lights and played only day games – until the team owners and the league threaten to leave the stadium. More money is made on prime time television than day games. Why, do you think, the World Series games aren’t day-games any more?  Who cares if you are groggy at work the next day because you were up until 2 a.m. watching a west-coast game – every day, for a week? And does the NFL care if you call-in sick to work on a Tuesday because you scored tickets to a Monday night football game and didn’t get home until the wee hours?

Does it matter to the owners that the average fan is freezing his tuckus watching a football game on a sub-zero evening, when had the game been played in the afternoon the cold wouldn’t be an issue?  Why should the owners care? The corporate-box owners are warm.  And after all, it is the luxury skyboxes revenues which ultimately provide the cash that allows the owners to have “Sub Zero” appliances in their homes.

Then there is the invention of the “Personal Seat License.” Costco charges you a hundred bucks or so for the “privilege” of shopping at their warehouse stores – and the average customer can save a multiple of that in discount items available at the store. “Big-Sports” bastardized that concept into the PSL each of which costs in the thousands of dollars and then REQUIRES the PSL holder to purchase season tickets – at whatever price the team determines each year, for all games – including unwanted exhibition games – for the life of the stadium, at which time your PSL “investment” becomes worthless.

The owners’ defense is that they are required to pay outlandish amounts to the superstar pro athletes the fans want to see. They say it is the players who are the real beneficiaries of these inflated prices.

It some ways, the fans are enablers. There are stories of fans mortgaging their homes to buy a PSL. Some fans will do or pay anything for their team. But in our defense what is a fan to do if you’ve paid most of your week’s salary for tickets to what you THOUGHT was a Sunday 1 p.m. game and because the game falls in the cold “pencil schedule” part of the season when the league can change the time of a game to suit the television networks you find yourself with tickets to a night game?

Is there any hope? Must fans slavishly follow the dictates of Big-Sport bosses? Maybe not.

The “Tea Party” folks have set the example. A true grassroots effort (in the case of sports a “field turf” movement wouldn’t be a pejorative) might be the game the fans need to play. And maybe the growing outrage about “Who Dat” – seeing it as the latest overreaching elites of Big-Sports – is just the catalyst.

Major League Baseball was exempted from monopoly laws by Congress and the President years ago. (The NFL as a monopoly is the subject of a pending Supreme Court case.) Professional athletes have their “Players’ Associations.”

Isn’t it time for the fans to unite? Let’s start a “fans’ union.” And just like the double-meaning of “Tea Party” (an historical event, and a political party) the double entendre of the two-letter abbreviation for the “Fans’ Union” is sweet, because THAT phrase is exactly the message “Big-Sports” has been sending to the fans for years. And I don’t think any league has asserted a legal claim to that phrase – yet.