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Fresh off a good year of football that ended in a Super Bowl victory for the New Orleans Saints, the franchise is planning a funeral to, once-and-for-all, bury the "Aints"."Fans are encouraged to bring their old Aints paper bags and place them in a coffin," writes the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
The Saints were introduced to pro football in 1967, and seemed to be a train wreck.
New Orleans suffered through more than an entire decade before they saw at least a .500 club, and two decades before they were given a winning season. To make things even worse, the Saints took over four decades to make the Superbowl.
The team's best years were in the late 80s to early 90s, but outside of those years, the Saints are synonymous with mediocrity. And for a team with only eight winning seasons in team history, mediocrity is putting it modestly.
The "Aints" nickname can be traced back to the early 1980s.
During the 1980 NFL season, the Saints lost their first 14 games (finished 1-15), and were an atrocious team to watch. It was during this season that then local sports commentator, Bernard "Buddy D" Diliberto, started the paper bag tradition we all know and love with the Saints.
Saints fans began wearing paper bags over their heads when attending home games, and the bags often displayed the teams new nickname, the "Aints".
Those days are over with now. It's time to say goodbye. I guess I was ill-informed that all it takes is one winning season and a Super Bowl to completely remove a team from a history of mediocrity.
Never mind the years upon years of fantastic sound bytes given to us by former coaches Jim Mora and Mike Ditka (boy do those provide some entertainment) over the abysmal play of their team. That can all be undone with one season.
In that case, there's still hope, Detroit.
