For decades America’s National Football League paid little attention to the chants of “Who Dat?” from fans of the New Orleans Saints, as the team stumbled from one losing season to the next. “Who Dat? Who Dat? Who Dat Say Dey Gonna Beat Dem Saints?” crowds would chorus in a display of false bravado, masking the unspoken reality that just about everybody beat the downtrodden club.

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.

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