NFL officially bags old paper ‘Aints’ for plastic A Saints fan celebrates the official tossing out of the old Aints paper bags, which fans used to wear during the team's dog days. Or dog years. Or dog decades. By Rudy Matthew Vorkapic
The Levee insaintity writer
The Aints officially have been sacked.
The NFL is restricting the size and types of bags fans can bring into stadiums in 2013, meaning should the Saints ever return to the futile play that marked nearly all of the team’s pre-Super Bowl history, fans will be forced to wear clear plastic bags over their heads with “Aints” written on them instead of brown paper bags.
A Saints fan celebrates the official tossing out of the old Aints paper bags, which fans used to wear during the team's dog days. Or dog years. Or dog decades.
In announcing the new bag policy for 2013, the NFL acknowledges that if Saints fans ever wear plastic Aints bags over their heads in numbers as large as they did for nearly 30 years when fans used to show up to games wearing the brown paper ones, we “could be looking at a massive death toll from asphyxiation.”
Some fans see the new bag policy as further vengeance by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell against the team and its fans over “Bounty-gate.” Others believe it is the league’s tacit acknowledgement the team has become an NFL power under coach Sean Payton.
Saints fans in 2010 performed a ceremonial second line to put the Aints to eternal rest in the hearts and minds of fans after the team’s Super Bowl victory, but the NFL’s action makes it official.
The only bags that can be taken into game venues beginning this season are clear plastic, vinyl or PVC that doesn’t exceed 12 inches by 6 inches by 12 inches, including one-gallon clear plastic freezer bags.
When the Saints went 1-15 during the 1980-81 season, late local legend and Saints broadcaster Buddy Diliberto coined the phrase “Aints” and initiated paper bags over fans’ heads.
Saints commentator and former quarterback Bobby Hebert, who paraded in the city in a dress after the Super Bowl win to honor the late Buddy D’s promise to do the same if the team ever won the big game, said of Diliberto’s Aints legacy: “I think he’d be happy to say ‘Bag Dat!’”
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