Brad Wing: Australian hero

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

30 November 2011

Australians don't pay a lot of attention to college football. It's even harder to find on TV than the NFL, it contains a plethora of teams a surfeit of confusing "Bowl" championships, and, well, we don't have a lot of time for American sport anyway. But we really should reserve a bit of national pride for Brad Wing.

I first came across Wing when I was directed last month to the above clip. Wing, a native of Melbourne, is the punter for the Louisiana State University Tigers, and this clip is a great demonstration of how a player in what is usually a rather anonymous role can grab the spotlight. Handed the ball on fourth down, Wing watches as the opposing Flordia Gators players scramble downfield to catch his kick. So eager are they to get in position to receive the ball, that none remain to actually try and tackle Wing.

As a result of what I like to think of as Australian ingenuity, Wing sizes up the situation and decides that if no one wants to tackle him, he might as well run with the ball instead of kicking it. And he does: 52 yards, all the way to the goal line.

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Here's where the play became controversial, however. As he crosses into the endzone, Wing slightly spreads his arms in what seems like a gesture of amazed exultation. The game's officials, however, decided that he was celebrating his accomplishment, and according to a recent rule change in college ball, that's verboten. The touchdown was denied, a penalty was called, and football fans across America thought our boy was robbed by joyless rule enforcers.

It hasn't held Wing back, though. Apparently his Aussie Rules background has given him kicking talents rarely seen in American football. His prowess with the boot has propelled him to minor celebrity — this university undergraduate has more than 8000 followers on Twitter — so much so that the Wall Street Journal featured him in a glowing profile: 

What sets Wing apart from other punters is he isn't one of them. A native of Melbourne, the left-footed Wing grew up playing Australian Rules Football, where precise punting and goal kicking are the game's most important skills

[...]

For most American punters, directional punting is a high-wire act. Misfire the punt toward the center of the field, and it sets up an easy return. Launch one at too wide of an angle, and it probably sails out of bounds.

"It's extremely difficult to be consistent with directional punting," said Sean Landeta, a former NFL punter and three-time All-Pro selection. "If you literally—and I mean literally—turn a couple of inches too far to the right, you can hit a wonderful punt, but it'll go out of bounds at the 40 instead of the 20."

Wing seldom has such issues. His greatest asset, coaches and teammates say, is his precision, not his leg. Wing said he typically can land the ball within five yards of his target when he uses the drop punt. "He can place it wherever he wants," said Drew Alleman, LSU's kicker.

Brad, mate: we salute you.

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Nevermore!

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

4 November 2011

Thanks to Dead Homer Society, I now know that the Baltimore NFL team, the Ravens, was named for the Edgar Allan Poe poem:

With fans playing an integral role, the selection of the nickname "Ravens" was inspired by the poetry of former Baltimore resident, Edgar Allan Poe. From a list of more than 100 possible nicknames presented by NFL Properties, club executives narrowed the list to 17. Focus groups of 200 people from the Baltimore area trimmed the list to six. A telephone survey of 1,000 fans shortened the list to Ravens, Marauders and Americans. Fans were then invited to participate in a phone-in poll conducted by the Baltimore Sun. Of 33,288 voters, nearly two-thirds (21,108) picked Ravens.

High brow!

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The Skins and DC

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

28 October 2011

A Redskins game at Fed-Ex Field

I've talked before about the forgotten side of Washington D.C. that exists alongside the city's political powerbrokers. Adam Serwer's described the distinction as one between "D.C." and "Washington":

Washington, D.C., has always been two cities. Washington spills out of downtown Metro stations at 8 A.M.; D.C. huddles on crowded buses at 6 A.M. On Sundays, when Washington goes to brunch, D.C. is in church. Washington clinks glasses in bars like Local 16 in its leisure time, while D.C. sweats out its perm at dance clubs like Love or DC Star. Washington has health-insurance benefits, but D.C. is paying out of pocket. Washington just closed on a condo; D.C. is in foreclosure. Washington is making money. D.C. never recovered from the 2001 recession.  

In that vein, the Washington Post has a great story up about the D.C. side of the city, describing how the local NFL team, the Redskins, went from being the last franchise to racially integrate to one beloved by a large swathe of the town's black population:

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The team has spent decades playing in largely black neighborhoods, from its current home in Prince George’s County — which black fans view more favorably than whites by a more than two-to-one margin — to RFK Stadium on East Capitol Street, surrounded by carryout joints and barbershops.

“Look at where RFK is and was. It’s in the heart of the city,” said NBA guard Roger Mason Jr., a lifelong Redskins fan who followed the team with his father in his youth. “I’m not talking about the White House. I’m talking about Southeast.”

 Definitely worth a read.

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Moneyball

By Jonathan Bradley in Sydney, Australia

27 September 2011

I've mentioned before my low-key enthusiasm for the culture surrounding baseball — honestly, I enjoy the idea of baseball more than its actual reality. (Perhaps this is what Alfred Soto means when he refers to the game's "romance"?) So I'm kind of eager to check out the new Aaron Sorkin-penned Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill-starring film Moneyball, which, by the looks of the trailer, makes signing a baseball team something dramatic and thrilling.

The film was released this past Friday in the US, and the critical response has thus far been quite enthusiastic. Richard Florida explains the background, and why it's a story about Oakland, California as well as about baseball:

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The movie, based on Michael Lewis’ bestseller of the same name, tells how Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s captured the American League West in 2002 utilizing a statistical technique known as sabermetrics. Beane was able to best bigger market teams that could attract major stars with higher salaries by focusing on sophisticated metrics such as on-base percentage, runs created, and linear weight, that maximize player success and help refine offensive tactics ...

Is there a reason this happened in Oakland instead of elsewhere? Maybe so. To start with the obvious, it’s a smaller market team with a limited budget. New York, Boston, L.A., and Atlanta are rich; they could care less about this approach, since they can and often do just go out and buy the players they need. But ... [a]long with San Francisco and San Jose, Oakland is one of the three major metros that make up the broad San Francisco Bay Area. And the prevailing culture of the region at the turn of the millennium – fueled by high tech industries from semiconductors and software to biotech and social media – was one that was based on innovative and commercially viable ideas. Engineering values were and continue to be deeply embedded in its DNA.

Running a baseball team like a tech start-up, perhaps? If so, it makes for a neat connection with Aaron Sorkin's movie about America from last year, The Social Network.

Sadly, we won't see Moneyball in Australia until November 10. In the meantime, anyone have any ideas as to the last great American sports movie? It's been a long while since I've seen Any Given Sunday, but I know I enjoyed that. Have I forgotten anything more recent?

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Bodyline politics

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

5 July 2011

Bill Woodfull facing Bodyline bowling at the 4th test in Brisbane, 1933

Pictured: Congress negotiates over the debt limit

In 1932 and 1933, the English cricket team toured Australia. The series of games between the nations would become famous for England's bodyline bowling tactic, a strategy designed to neuter the great Australian cricketer Donald Bradman by targeting the batsman's body rather than the wicket. (Americans: Think of a pitcher deliberately trying to hit a batter.) Bodyline was controversial enough to become the basis for a diplomatic incident between the UK and Australia, and the sentiments it stirred are aptly summed up by the words Australian captain Bill Woodfull spoke to the English tour manager Pelham Warner.

"There are two teams out there," said the Australian. "One is playing cricket. The other is making no attempt to do so."

In American politics right now, there are two parties. The Democrats are trying to govern the country. The Republicans are making no attempt to do so.

If you read this blog fairly consistently, you probably have a pretty good idea of where I'm coming from with my political views. I don't try to hide them, but nor do I try to premium them. I usually find it more interesting to understand what is happening in America than to try to argue for my preferred policy outcomes; after all, that government is not mine. I agree with what Frank Rich wrote in his final column as a New York Times opinion writer: "I do have strong political views, but opinions are cheap. Anyone could be a critic of the Bush administration. The challenge as a writer was to try to figure out why it governed the way it did — and how it got away with it for so long — and, dare I say it, to have fun chronicling each new outrage."

So I genuinely believe that criticizing the current Republican party is an act of analysis, not partisanship. The left, of course, does not have a problem complaining about the GOP, but thoughtful figures on the right have begun to do so as well over the past few years. Conor Friedersdorf and Ross Douthat have both voiced strong critiques of the American right. David Frum is particularly famous for his recent denunciations of the party. Andrew Sullivan and Fareed Zakaria have attacked the party's conservatism. And now, David Brooks may be added to the list:

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In Brooks's column today, he concludes that the GOP "may no longer be a normal party" and that it is infected by a movement that has "no sense of moral decency":

The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

This tack from Brooks may not surprise some. He is known as the one conservative who liberals like, though I believe that reputation arises more from his style than his politics. Nonetheless, these are extraordinary remarks from a columnist who is more diffident than fiery, who favours drawing people into his broad national consensus rather than exiling them as villainous. And they are correct.

Brooks is talking specifically about the negotiations regarding raising the debt limit. The Obama administration is now offering to cut entitlements, but Republicans still refuse to negotiate — even though the Democrats have downgraded their pitch for tax increases to mere cuts in expenditures made through the tax system. 

This is either an irresponsible negotiating tactic or economic insanity induced by a party that has convinced itself default doesn't matter. (n.b.: Default does matter.) I still consider that the conservative side of politics, and the Republican party itself, has sufficient sobriety to ensure a deal is reached eventually, but as each day passes, that looks more likely to be a false hope. Even more troubling, Republicans appear to genuinely believe their ruthless cuts represent the wishes of an American people that are nowhere near that conservative. It is true that every election winner claims a mandate, but equally, an election win does not mean the public approves of every policy a party might like to implement.

Should Republicans succeed in scuttling a deal, Brooks has a theory:

If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

This displays an admirable confidence in democratic accountability, and I'd like to share it. I know, however, that throughout history, presidents have been awarded more credit than they deserve for the successes on their watch, and have accordingly received more blame than warranted for the failures. If the worst comes to the worst, I hope Brooks is right, and the electorate will correctly judge that one side is making no attempt to play cricket.

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12 000 words on cricket

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

17 June 2011

...not from me, thank god. 

I'm not a big cricket fan, but I have a special fondness for reading about Americans encountering the game. A fantastic example of the form is up at Grantland, and features Michael Schur and Nate DiMeo struggling to wrap their heads around wickets, LBWs, and seam bowling. With the recent Pakistan vs India World Cup semi final as their guide, they try to find as many analoges to baseball as possible. A choice excerpt:

It quickly becomes clear that this is relatively extraordinary. It's early, but Umar Gul is already having a bad day, and the camera lingers on him like he's Rick Ankiel in the 2000 NLDS. We also get many shots of Gul's captain, Shahid Afridi, a handsomely bearded devil who right now looks like he would be thrilled if Umar Gul suddenly and irrevocably retired from international cricket. When Sehwag is awarded a free hit because of a foot fault by Gul — stepping fully over the line while bowling, which gives the batsman essentially a free chance to just whack away with minimal risk — Afridi can't even look at Gul he's so angry. The expressiveness with which Afridi displays his displeasure with his teammate, were it shown by Derek Jeter during a bad inning from CC Sabathia, would be the only thing the New York media would talk about for 11 weeks.

Well worth a read.

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Weekend update

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

2 April 2011

An map of the United States delineating the regions by well-known stereotypes of the people thereinKoalogist has designed this useful guide to the regions of the United States. You can buy the graphic here if you like it.

Here's some reading for the weekend.

Since baseball season opened yesterday, here's "Piazza, New York Catcher," by the not-actually-American Belle and Sebastian. (They're from Scotland.) It was an excellent opener; the Mariners beat the As, and, after one game, are undefeated in 2011. I suggest they avoid pushing their luck and end their season now.

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"It is designed to break your heart"

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

1 April 2011

A 2010 baseball game at SafeCo Field between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers

It was baseball opening day today, and though I can't usually get excited about the sport unless I'm in a bar or my reliably awful Seattle Mariners are playing, I watched the last couple innings of the Dodgers/Giants opener just to mark the occasion. (The Ms don't play their first game of the year until tomorrow, when they'll hopefully not lose in Oakland.)

More enoyable than most games of baseball, however, is the kind of literary musings that centre on baseball. It's probably just down to the languorous pace that leads it to attracting people who like a game they can watch while working on their latest novel, but the sport has a famed reputation as a game for nerds. I'm rather fond, for instance, of the cameo the sport has in Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and the majesty the teams attain when referred to as "the Reds of Cincinatti" or the "White Sox of Chicago."

I've been seeing a quote floating about the Internets lately from a former Major League Baseball commissioner, Bart Giamatti. It comes from his A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti:

"It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops."

Baseball has never come close to breaking my heart, but I like that a lot. The vignette continues here.

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Wacky Presidents Day link of the day

By Jonathan Bradley in Newcastle, Australia

22 February 2011

Presidents Day has been and gone in Australia, but in America it's still Monday, and hence still the holiday. In my mind, the best way to celebrate what was once known as Washington's Birthday is to salute the imaginativeness of the Internet as applied to the occupants of the Oval Office and their character traits. Last year I linked to a list of the sexiest presidents. For 2011, how about this draft guide to the talents of the 43 illuminaries in the world of professional football? Some of my favourites:

1. William Howard Taft, Nose Tackle. A big man with good hands. Thicker than a copper bathtub through the ass, an important asset when talking about nose tackles. Nimble enough to construct Anti-Trust legislation and then properly evaluate it as a jurist. Endurance (one term) is an issue.

5. Bill Clinton, Running Back. An amazingly elusive open field runner with penchant for fumbling the ball with the game on the line. Character issues are a genuine concern, as he once texted inappropriate images to a female trainer. Gets great penetration. Often found out of position; puts ball where it shouldn't go. Conditioning is suspect.

42. Barack Obama, Wide Receiver. Too little football experience to properly evaluate here; already holds Heisman Trophy for some reason, though.

(H/t to Colin Seiler for that one.)

Speaking of presidents and football, and since I've just finished re-reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, here's Hunter S. Thompson biographer Willam McKeen recounting the single interview Thompson got with his bete noire, Richard Nixon:

Hunter was one of those reporters following Nixon around in the early days of the [1968] primary. And after an event one night in New Hampshire he was getting juiced at the bar with some of his other reporters when one of the Nixon aides came in and said, "Listen, the old man has a 75-minute drive to the airport to catch his private Lear jet. He wants to talk football. None of us know football. Thompson, you know football. Will you sit with the President and talk to him?" And the minute you bring up any other subject but football, we're dumping you out the car by the side of the road in the frozen tundra of New Hampshire. So he said, okay.

Given his love for the sport, I have no doubt Nixon would be disappointed at his number 27 rating in the draft pick list above.

Finally, I'm grateful to the Associated Press for clearing up something I have to check on every year. According to its Twitter feed: "It's Presidents Day." No apostrophe; "Presidents" is an adjective in this case.

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This is Packer country; where's your green card

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

7 February 2011

It's Super Bowl Sunday today, and I'll be watching, of course. I'm not the biggest sports fan in the world, but I suspend my boredom with athletics for an endeavor "that combine[s] balletic grace, keen intellect and brute strength" in the way football does. Besides, during this game, they show some neat commercials?

I can't work up much enthusiasm for this game however. I'm siding with the Green Bay Packers today, but that's mostly because in my adopted city of Seattle, the Pittsburgh Steelers are personae non grata; they defeated Seattle's Seahawks in Super Bowl XL thanks to some decidedly dubious officiating decisions, and ever since, the Emerald City has had no sympathy for the black and yellow. Add to that six Super Bowl championships already in the team's possession — more than any other franchise in the league — and a quarterback — Ben Roethlisberger — who only escaped having to stand trial for rape because the alleged victim didn't want to have to go through a court case, and you have a decidedly unsympathetic team.

The Packers aren't anything to get roused about, however. I find them rather dull, and nothing about their story this year or their history has me excited about them the way I was about last year's winners, the feel good New Orleans Saints. The Packers already have three Super Bowl wins, so they can't claim underdog status, and, oh yeah, a few of their players have been accused of sexual assault as well. 

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Can you blame me for getting most excited thus far about New Orleans rapper Lil' Wayne's opportunistic tribute to his claimed favorite team, Green Bay? As a track it's not bad — he gets in some good shots at the Steelers' players — but it has a shelf life shorter than that of a plate of nachos in a football fan's living room today.

The track is a remake of one by local Pittsburgher Wiz Khalifa, who originally wrote it as a dedication to the Steelers, and titled it "Black and Yellow." When I reviewed it for another blog I write for, The Singles Jukebox, I said:

I didn’t imagine Pittsburgh to be a city of pattering synth lines, champagne, and neon colors, but it is now; Khalifa’s song is the biggest song, rap or otherwise, dedicated to the town I can think of. Its steel heritage has been subsumed by pharmaceuticals for a while now anyway, so perhaps it’s not surprising its new anthem has more in common with slick nightlife than blue collar industry. “Black and Yellow” gleams like a candy painted whip, not iron alloy, but Khalifa delivers the kind of precision needed to produce the sort of song that rallies a metro area, and he’s assisted by some drums that thwack hard enough to overcome any lyrical boilerplate. Because if I have one complaint, it’s this: Khalifa, I’ve seen a Steelers game, and I know your hometown’s favored hue. I also know how much Ben Roethlisberger means to you guys. But couldn’t you dig a bit deeper into local trivia when putting your city on the national stage?

Andrew Noz went further at Cocaine Blunts:

And therein lies the true genius of “Black & Yellow”: at face value it serves to rally the hometown troops. If Wiz never makes another record he could probably comfortably live off the residuals that will come from being played at every hometown sporting event over the next twenty years. It’s destined to become the “I Like To Move It Move It” of the Three Rivers. It doesn’t alienate anyone, but in the most purposeful manner. It’s carefully non-specific. Apart from the Terrible Towels in the video, Wiz makes no specific reference to the ‘Burgh or the Steelers.

Kind of sums it up for this game: not even the hometown anthem is anything but perfunctory. The game starts at 6:30 p.m. Eastern/3:30 p.m. Pacific, and 10:30 a.m. Sydney time. To get you excited, here's Wiz Khalifa's video. It has some nice shots of Pittsburgh:

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King James edition.

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

9 July 2010

The news gripping America these past few sweltering days has been primarily concerned with the future career prospects of now ex-Cleveland NBA player LeBron James. I would tell you more about the situation, but, other than informing you that he has signed with the Miami Heat and is now more likely to win a championship, I can offer little that would be enlightening. Of the four major American sports, basketball is the realm in which I am at my weakest. 

Being a politics guy, I turn to FiveThirtyEight for my sports analysis, and they do not disappoint. But being an urban geography nerd, my favorite portion of Nate Silver's post over there was this one:

According to commoncensus.org; the New York Knicks are the favorite team in 10 markets totaling 23.1 million people, the Chicago Bulls in 19 markets totaling 18.0 million people (the Bulls are popular in Missouri and Iowa, which have no NBA teams), and the Cavaliers in 14 markets totaling 11.8 million people. By contrast, the Heat's market is relatively small at 8.3 million people, and has a smaller percentage of African-Americans than do Chicago and New York. (Black Americans are two-and-half times more likely to be NBA fans than the population average, according to polling conducted by YouGov.)

One tends to think of Cleveland as a small and shrinking Midwest city, but such conceptions obscure how populous states like Ohio are, despite internal immigration flows heading south and southwest. It's a similar circumstance to that of the city of Detroit and the metropolitan area of Detroit, I suppose; while the former dwindles to 900 000 citizens, the latter remains a Sydney-sized metropolis of, depending how you measure it, 4-5 million people. Meanwhile, the city of Cleveland is home to just 450 000 people, but it has a metropolitan area of 2.25 million, many of whom will be disappointed by James's announcement. Meanwhile, Miami has a similar city size, but a metro population of more than twice that of Cleveland, and it was this awareness that caused me to misconstrue the size of these teams' markets. I had, of course, disregarded the many, many residents of smaller cities scattered around Cleveland's vicinity. The rust belt may be shrinking, but it is doing so from a formidable size.

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Winning a more perfect game.

By Jonathan Bradley in Seattle, WA

5 June 2010

Some big stories in America are big stories the world over. The millions of litres of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is big news whether you're in Sydney or Seattle, as is Israel's storming of the flotilla headed for Gaza earlier this week. (Like it or not, stories about Israel almost always end up as stories about America as well.) But sometimes America will become gripped by an event the rest of the world could not care less about.

Such an event occurred earlier this week, when the nation took a time out from condemning its president for not suiting up in SCUBA gear to plug the oil leak himself. If the C.E.O. of BP wants to walk in to a bar right now in America, he should make sure he has Jim Joyce at his side. 

Joyce? Probably the most loathed man in America right now, and no, the country has not developed a sudden distaste for Irish literature. Joyce was the first base umpire in a baseball game Wednesday night between the Detroit Tigers and the Cleveland Indians. Tigers' pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from pitching a perfect game, an extraordinarily rare baseball achievement in which a pitcher pitches for at least nine innings and allows no batter to make it to first base. In the game's 135 year history, with thousands of games being played a year, only twenty perfect games have been pitched. 

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As Galarraga sought his 27th out on Wednesday night, Cleveland's Jason Donald grounded the pitch and took off for first base. Detroit cleaned the ball up quickly, Donald looked to be certainly out and Galarraga looked to have made history. Joyce, however, judged the Cleveland batter to have made it to first successfully. The Detroit home crowd disagreed sharply with him, as did the video replay. (Major League Baseball does not review umpiring decisions with replays.) And after the game, Joyce recanted as well, apologizing to the Tigers' pitcher and admitting "I just cost that kid a perfect game."

The national pastime will go on, however, and America will return to the kind of news everyone the world over pays attention to - especially considering oil might go on leaking into the gulf until Christmas. And Joyce can count at least one supporter on his side. But the furore over this incident is a nice reminder that the United States, just like every other country, has its own odd little obsessions that do not come up on an outsider's radar.

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Super Bowl Sunday

By Jonathan Bradley in Washington DC

8 February 2010

We're minutes away from the kick off of Super Bowl XLIV (Remember, I told you that the virtuous New Orleans Saints would be up against the blandly efficient Indianapolis Colts), and it's good to know that down in the great state of Louisiana, even the politicians are looking out for the home team.

But the evil empire the Big Easy is up against is not the Peyton Manning-led Colts, but the NFL itself, who have tried to stake their claim to the home grown fan chant of "Who Dat?" Check it:

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Now, after breaking a 43-year run of bad luck to win a place at this weekend’s Super Bowl, the NFL’s multi-billion dollar corporate machine has taken a sudden interest in the “Who Dat” catchphrase, claiming that it owns the rights to its usage. It has even issued “cease and desist” notices against small-time souvenir vendors for using the words on T-shirts and demanding royalties on their profits.

The move prompted uproar among the Saints’ fan army, known as the Who Dat Nation, and turned into a political crisis when the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee passed a motion calling on the State Governor, Bobby Jindal, to set his attorney-general on the NFL.

It wasn't only up-and-coming GOP star Jindal who came to the defence of the home town's fans. Louisianan Democrats in DC, like Rep. Charlie Melancon, in a true display of bipartisanship, collected signatures for a pro-Saints petition. But the true star was Republican Senator David Vitter, who, in a penned missive, dropped this bomb on the NFL:

“This letter will also serve as formal legal notice that I am having T-shirts printed that say, ‘Who Dat say we can’t print Who Dat?’ for widespread sale in commerce. Please either drop your present ridiculous position or sue me,” wrote the Republican, while the Democratic Congressman Charlie Melancon collected thousands of signatures on a petition entitled: “No one owns ‘Who Dat’ except for the Who Dat Nation.”

The NFL caved of course, and today, Saints fans are free to sell their dodgy merchandise to their hearts' content. And on that feel-good note, it's time for a great game of football. Or a run of fantastic commercials, interrupted by organised violence, should you prefer. Either way, GEAUX SAINTS.

EDIT: If you're interested, check me tweeting the game at @jbradleyUSSC on Twitter.

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They call me the N.O. capo

By Jonathan Bradley in Washington DC

25 January 2010

If you're wondering about the title of that last post, direct your attention to the Wikipedia* article on the subject's extensive history:

Who dat? is the name of a chant of support by fans of the New Orleans Saints, an American football team. The entire chant is: "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?"

[...]

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.

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The first reference to "Who Dat?" can be found in the 19th Century. A featured song in E.E. Rice's "Summer Nights" is the song "Who Dat Say Chicken In dis Crowd", with lyrics by poet Paul Laurence Dunbar.[1] A common tag line in the days of Negro minstrel shows was: "Who dat?" answered by "Who dat say who dat?" Many different blackfaced gags played off that opening. Vaudeville performer Mantan Moreland was known for the routine.[1] Another example is "Swing Wedding," a rarely shown 1930s Harmon-Ising cartoon musical, which caricatured Fats Waller, Cab Calloway, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Ethel Waters, and the Mills Brothers as frogs in a swamp performing minstrel show jokes and jazz tunes. The frogs repeatedly used the phrase "who dat?"

In the swing era, "who dat" chants back and forth between the band and the band leader or between the audience and the band were extemporaneous. That is, there was no one specific set of words except for the two magic ones.

More here.

*I'm usually very wary of Wikipedia, but this is too interesting to pass up.

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Who Dat?

By Jonathan Bradley in Washington DC

25 January 2010

If ever there were a game to convert you to the pleasures of American football, it was tonight's NFC Championship contest between the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings. The match up between an entertaining team from a hurricane-ravaged hard-partying Southern city with an infectious level of hometown pride, against a  solid yet unexciting band of interlopers led by an aging turncoat of a quarterback (fans of his previous team, the Green Bay Packers, are none too happy about his Vikings' contract), made for a contest in which  even a novice could delight. That the two teams were matched touchdown for touchdown, field goal for field goal, heartbreaking fumble for heartbreaking fumble, made for the kind of epic drama that makes it seem not-so-silly to get worked up about two packs of armor-clad grown men smashing into each other for a few hours on a Sunday night.

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Because, really, I'm not usually a fan of any kind of sport. I make an exception for the NFL, and watching this game in a noisy Virginia sports bar, where even the wait staff would halt their work and cheer on the major plays, was an absolute delight. That this game was the kind that was won with a field goal prised in an overtime period the Saints gained only through a last-second Vikings fumble made it even better.

In two weeks time, the New Orleans Saints will face off against the Indianapolis Colts in Miami for Super Bowl XLV. Millions of Americans will tune in, many of whom will be watching solely for the big budget commercials and the cultural experience; I will be watching for the football as well. It's tough to see the game in Australia due to the time difference (it will kick off mid Monday morning in Sydney), but if you get a chance to watch, give it a look. The big budget spectacle of football is one of America's great and unique joys, and seeing the time-tested, superstar-led Colts face a New Orleans playing the franchise's first Super Bowl promises to be an excellent experience. I'll be eating chili, drinking a few Buds, and cheering on the Saints. Y'all should join me. 

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