Da Super Bowl
February 9, 2010
Well, the Super Bowl is in the books and I can honestly say that from a wagering perspective, this was one of the worst games ever for me.
I violated one of my own gambling rules, and this makes the loss that much more difficult to swallow.
I have a hard and fast rule with professional sports betting, and that rule is … never, ever, ever give away points to a professional sports team. Spotting points to professional players is logically ludicrous. If they are good enough to play in the NFL, they are good enough to win the game. This is especially true if they are good enough to make it to the Super Bowl.
So why did I violate this rule?
I did so because of my own hatred of what the world is becoming.
On Saturday, I was already convinced to take the Saints. The number two team in the league with a 5-7 point advantage was the obvious choice under my personal system. A no-brainer.
Then, on game day, I sat down in the sports books and began actually watching pre-game coverage and analysis. In addition, I pulled up a variety of sports websites to watch their own video coverage of the Bowl.
What unfolded before me sent a shiver up my spine.
“Who Dat”
Holy Leaping Jesus the Caped Crusader, it was “Idiocracy” playing out before my very eyes.
Before this weekend, I had never heard the term “Who Dat” in this context, and at first I thought it was a parody. As I went from one place to another, however, I was struck with the inescapable and disturbing fact that what I was witnessing was very real.
An entire city known for widespread illiteracy … was celebrating that intelligence before national television cameras, and the country as a whole was eating it up. I was actually modestly offended. It was like the people of New Orleans were a minstrel show for the rest of the country. The gushing sports reporters who repeated “Who Dat” ad nauseum may as well have been wearing blackface and holding a watermelon.
Later in the day, I learned that the NFL itself was asserting a copyright to the phrase “Who Dat”. Apparently stupidploitation is alive and well.
If I have one true bias against any specific group of people, it is probably wiggers. At one point in my younger life, I was forced to come to grips with my own “ghetto speak”. I grew up speaking in a decidedly inner-city dialect, and later in life, it became a point of self-conciseness. I realized that I used highly localized phrases which were “normal” in my immediate geographic area, but at times I was embarrassed when I realized just how illiterate it sounded everywhere else. I made a conscious decision to try and break some bad habits, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why someone would want to pick up those same habits. I sounded like a moron, and to a large extent, I still do. It’s certainly nothing to strive for.
For me the word “f*cking” is still wholly interchangeable with the word “very”, and because of this, nobody who knows me well takes offense when I use the word, and at 41, I’ve kind of ceased trying to make any more progress. The roughness around the edges that remains will probably remain in perpetuity.
However, I hate when people bend over backward to sound “street” in spoken and written word. You’ve no doubt seen such correspondence online.
“Me ‘n mah peeps be goin’ 2 da show at dat club wif my shawty. We be representin’ in da heezy.”
Who are these people trying to fool?
The above sentence is much harder to type than “I am taking my girlfriend to the concert, see you there”.
Anytime you see “ghetto type”, it is absolute proof positive that the author lives in a single family home … probably on a cul de’ sac.
How do I know?
Because I sincerely doubt that anyone from the true inner city types in that manner. I grew up with the people that these honkies are trying to emulate, and to this day, exactly zero of them send me emails with these ludicrous misspellings. If you have to force the issue that much, it’s just not genuine.
A second runner-up to this peeve is typing in accents. It is for this reason that I sparingly use slang spellings like “y’all”, “doin’”, and so forth. Accents are natural speech deviations, but typing in accents seem to aggrandize the point that you have one. To me, this seems forced and disingenuous.
Because of all of the above, I advocate untreatable gonorrhea for anyone who says “Who Dat”. It’s forced illiteracy which will no doubt cement the perception that it is cool to be stupid.
Another thing I hate is people that go off on tangents and have trouble sticking to their original point. Fortunately, I never do this.
Anyway …
I scanned the Super Bowl packages and bet the Colts for the literacy play, and I also bet several propositions based on the Colts being the team of the intellectually elite. I learned something new recently from a member of my forums that I had not noticed before. Apparently, Sports Books are not allowed to use the name “Super Bowl” due to some kind of NFL issue. Instead, they use names like “The Big Game” or “Pro Football Championships”. I’m not sure why, but I find this amusing.
Watching the Super Bowl at the Hilton Sports Book
After getting all of my bets in under the wire, I made my way to the Hilton Theater and immediately realized that I was out of my element.
Imagine 1,500 smelly, farting, drunk men in a dimly lit room … all shouting at a humongous screen. Half of the dudes were wearing NFL-licensed merchandise (why?), people were constantly walking through the seating isles, and getting into and out of the non-isle seats was harder than in a real football stadium.
There was also the whole “mass hallucination” thing going on. Everyone went nuts at random intervals, and I did not know the proper queues.
For instance, when Carrie Underwood was announced, the crowd went nuts. Then, when she held the note “land of the freeeeeeeeeeeeee”, the crowd went nuts. Then, when Emmitt Smith was shown during the coin toss, the crowd, once again … went nuts.
Watching the Super Bowl at the Hilton Theater
Watching the Super Bowl at the Hilton Theater
Watching the Super Bowl at the Hilton Theater
These kind of group dynamics creep me out a little because I just don’t understand why the sight of a person on a screen causes people to erupt. The hysterics seem random, and the people on the TV screen cannot hear the cheers. I like being in music venues where the band feeds off the crowd, but he “rowdy communal living room” thing is uncomfortable.
I’ve never in my entire life been as excited about anything as these people were at the sight of a retired football player throwing a coin in the air. They were visibly thrilled more times in 5 minutes than I’ve been in 40 years. I guess these types of things underscore how unusual I am in comparison to the population at large. Sometimes it sucks to constantly feel like an alien on your own planet.
Watching the Super Bowl at the Sahara Sports Book
Once a couple of spectators started throwing food at each other and a plastic bottle cap narrowly missed my head, I decided to find a more sedate place to watch the game. That place was the Sahara. I pulled up a chair in the room adjacent to the Sports Book, whipped out my laptop, and watched the game with a far more subdued crowd.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not hating on the Hilton. They offered something that the majority really liked, and I was glad to see that people were enjoying themselves and pelting each other with food. I had never been to the theater during a football game before, so the entire experience was brand new to me. The theater viewing has mass-appeal, and the Hilton has obviously tapped into a winning formula. Kudos.
Watching Super Bowl on Ceiling of Hilton Star Trek Area
When the game finally ended, I looked through the tickets I had bought, and was dismayed that the majority were losers. I think the only thing I won was the “under” for total points scored. I thought that the scoring looked a bit aggressive, and fortunately … it was.
Unfortunately, some of my people won on a fair number of wagers, and this means that I will spend much of this week making the rounds and collecting.
I will be interested to see how the sports books made out this year. While at the Hilton, it appeared that there were two Saints jerseys for every Colts jersey. If the attendees bet accordingly in a 2-1 ratio on the winner, it may not have been a stellar year for the books. I think a lot of it will depend on just how many prop bets expired useless, since that is where a large amount of the money is made these days.
Anyway, congratulations to the Saints and their legions of illiterate fans for a job well done.
Written by mike_ch on February 9, 2010 at 7:15 am
I assure you that my California suburban slang is even worse. Sure, we started using “hella” to mean “very,” but by the time I was getting to picking it up the meaning had incomprehensibly changed to “a whole lot of.”
I find that when I slip into that there’s hella people pissed off.
Written by par88 on February 9, 2010 at 8:10 am
The bookies did OK this year… most of the public’s money was on the Colts
http://www.financialpost.com/related/links/story.html?id=2529910
Written by Aaron on February 9, 2010 at 10:38 am
The whole Who Dat! is just a dumb catch phrase, much like my personal catch phrase “theresbloodinmystool!”™ it’s just another way for people to cheer……..it’s not nearly as bad as somebody saying “nawlins” when they’re from any where but new orleans………you should try yelling the catch phrase sometimes when something good happens, you’d be surprised at how good it feels to hit a black jack and yell theresbloodinmystool!
Written by keith on February 9, 2010 at 12:35 pm
i’m not from new orleans, but it just hurts my ears when people pronounce every vowel in orleans. “nawlins” just sounds more correct. if things like cities and countries and what not are pronounced a certain way by the residents, then that is how it should be pronounced. kind of like the whole Bush thing with “nu-cu-lur” – noone in 8 years could have told him it was “nu-clear”?
i’ve never understood the whole yelling at the tv either – reminds me of the idiots who yell like crazy at the race book for their horse to win. i’ve bet on the horses in many ways, and about all i can ever muster is a “come on” under my breath, usually followed by “you fucker” if my horse is slipping.
Written by philipj on February 9, 2010 at 2:49 pm
“Whodat” has been used in NOLA type music for a 100 years. I remember the only black family I knew as a small child using those non words when singing. The foolish use of whodat will expand for the same reason as gang hand signals and wearing baseball caps at various angles. A sociologist traced both back to black and Mexican gangsters in southern California. Now white guys wanting to look tough and swarmy are wearing baseball caps at silly angles, making themselves look silly. Read the directions, bill forward, size tag to the back.
‘Couldn’t help but enjoy the “I voted for literacy” wager.
Written by Disco Stu on February 9, 2010 at 6:25 pm
“These kind of group dynamics creep me out a little because I just don’t understand why the sight of a person on a screen causes people to erupt. ”
Porn?
Written by Tyler Durden on February 9, 2010 at 6:29 pm
I can’t stand that shit. Playing in the MGM Grand poker room sunday night I heard that every 30 seconds. It got real old and when I was having my chips bleed by douchebags and idiots…….hearing “WHO DAT?!” every few seconds caused me to just cash out and go to Aria.
Written by Jake on February 9, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Rex –
Were you a fan of Salinger? Did his passing have any real effect on you? Im only asking because you write like him…well at least like the style reflected in “Catcher”.
Written by wbeem on February 10, 2010 at 1:14 am
Why congratulate the illiterate fans? They didn’t do shit to win the game.
Written by d3wayne on February 10, 2010 at 1:30 am
I am from the south. i’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans. Most people don’t saw “nawlins”
We say “NEW OR-LINS” And almost never say NEW OR-LE-ANS. Where every vowel is pronounced. That is how the announcers were saying it at the Super Bowl.
Whodat has been around a long time. It was used by musicians during live shows. Big Band and Jazz acts have used it forever. there wasn’t always a standard response it just depended on the artist or the show. It became a chant for the Saints in the 1980′s . It’s just a part of the lexicon. 2 years ago nobody outside of Saints fans and people from the south would have known what you were talking about when you said “whodat”
Now for someone who has been a lifelong Saints fan. It is mildly annoying to hear all the people jump on the band wagon . and say Whodat every 2 minutes. But we will take ‘em i guess.
I agree about the trying to sound street in written words. It is just plain dumb. With the exception to “ya’ll”
When i type a sentence . It is perfectly acceptable to use Ya’ll when referring to a group of people. Because that is how I speak. People would wonder if it was really me sending a text if i wrote. What are “you guys” doing? Or ,what are “you all” doing? It is not just an accent it is an actual word.
With all that being said. I am heading to New Orleans tomorrow. It is gonna be the best Mardi Gras ever. Geaux Saints
Written by Gorgeous George on February 10, 2010 at 6:12 am
I say, I say, I say boy. The south is filled with people who speak poorly or like Foghorn Leghorn. I don’t think they have schools down there; other than KFC University.
Written by Wally on February 10, 2010 at 9:03 pm
It’s getting where I can’t stand hanging out in the Sports Books for more than 10 minutes, I used to enjoy hanging out and watching the games, but there’s too many “10 cent millionaires” for me now, guys that put down their 20 dollars and go nuts when they’re winning and then turn their hat sideways and are ready to fight someone when losing.
Written by Ace on February 11, 2010 at 8:42 am
Where you from, GG? You probably shouldn’t be throwing rocks. The South has no monopoly on rednecks.
Written by Cheryl on February 12, 2010 at 5:59 pm
I am a native New Orleanian, now living in north Louisiana. You obviously don’t know much about the south, particularly New Orleans. Our dialect is no different from other areas of the country; its just as different as anywhere else. The ‘th’ sound in NO is softened to a ‘d’ sound, thus ‘dat for ‘that’. No biggie. Its just the way we talk. I have learned to integrate the proper ‘th’ sound into my vocabulary, now that I live in northe Louisiana, but still embrace the charm of the New Orleans pronunciation of ‘th’.
I personally find the ebonics and ghetto street language permeating our entire society more offensive than a softened ‘th’.
Using the f word to substitute for ‘very’ is not acceptable, so I don’t understand your criticism of the New Orleans dialect.
Get over it – I was in Las Vegas on SuperBowl weekend and shouted ‘Who Dat’ every chance I got. Give New Orleans a break, will you? Geaux Saints! How bout dat????
Written by hey der on February 14, 2010 at 12:22 am
The ‘d’ for ‘th’ sound is prevalent through out the English speaking world. Chicago – “Da Bears”, Ireland – “Our Fadder who art in..” Mafioso’s “Dem dese and dose” and so on.
The New Orleans Saints’ “Who dat!” cheer had a flair up in in the early to mid 80′s and I remember some local high schools in my area of Florida adopted it with “Who dat say our D can’t jam?” as did the Gators.
Old news dat “Who Dat” cheer is.