Chant
"Who Dey!" is the name of a chant of support by fans of the Cincinnati Bengals, in use for over 30 years. The entire chant is: "Who dey, who dey, who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?" The answer screamed in unison, "Nobody!" Sometimes fans will instead shout "Who Dey!" to represent the entire cheer. "Who Dey" is also the name of the team’s mascot, a Bengal tiger.
The Who Dey chant's first known use was by fans of the 1980 Cincinnati Bengals. While the origin of the chant is unsettled, one possible source for the chant is a 1980 commercial for Red Frazier Ford of Cincinnati, which used this tagline: “Who’s going to give you a better deal than Red Frazier?...Nobody!” Cincinnati fans who had seen the commercial many times may have just copied it when cheering.
The chant bears some similarities to the phrase "Who Dat?," which was officially adopted by the New Orleans Saints in 1983 but had been used by Louisiana's high school team fans for some time. The saying “Who Dat?" originated in minstrel shows and vaudeville acts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, then it was taken up by New Orleans Jazz and various Big band folks in the 1920s and 1930s. In the late 1960s, local Louisiana High Schools, St. Augustine High School in New Orleans and Patterson High School are reported to have been using the cheer and Gulf Coast fans of Alcorn State University and Louisiana State University picked up the cheer in the 1970s. Southern University in New Orleans claims to have originated the cheer in the late 1960s in their version: "Who dat talkin' 'bout beatin' dem Jags." There is a long-standing debate between the Saints and Bengals fan bases over which one originated the chant from their culture.
Read more about this topic: Cincinnati Bengals
Famous quotes containing the word chant:
“With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and
lands—and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“Pan’s Syrinx was a girl indeed,
Though now she’s turned into a reed;
From that dear reed Pan’s pipe does come,
A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
So chant it, as the pipe of Pan;”
—John Lyly (1553–1606)