“Who dat?” is older than us all, but its association with the New Orleans Saints first flowered in 1983.

That was the season that an intrepid former World Series hero teamed with two enterprising brothers, a Neville and several Saints players to forever cement the phrase

Ron Swoboda, whose diving, game-saving catch for the 1969 New York Mets remains one of the all-time World Series highlights, had come to New Orleans to replace a legend when sportscaster and master grammarian Bernard “Buddy D” Diliberto jumped from then-ABC affiliate WVUE-Channel 8 to NBC affiliate WDSU-Channel 6.

One of the jobs Swoboda got as Diliberto’s impossible successor at WVUE was hosting a prime-time show — “On Sports” — that led into “Monday Night Football.”

Swoboda segmented that highlights-and-high-jinks hour into time for prep football, LSU, Tulane, and of course, the Saints.

read more of the story here.

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