New Orleans Saints

New Orleans Saints: The "Aints" and the origin of the Bagheads

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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What’s up with paper bags on the heads of losing teams? The Who Dat Nation started a trend that has continued to this day, despite it being harder to find paper bags in the first place.

LANDOVER, MD- November 20- Len Salas wears a bag and his father, Max Salas, llooks on after the Redskins fell behind the as the Redskins lose to the the Dallas Cowboys in overtime at FedEx field on November, 20 2011 in Landover, Md (Photo by Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post via Getty Images).

The Saints have had a history of losing. Aside from some anomalous years in the Jim Mora and Sean Payton eras and even an improbable Super Bowl win, there have been many more years of the Black and Gold being the “Aints” rather than the Saints.

In the late 1970s, the Saints were so bad that the fanbase started a trend that has endured in the NFL and even in other sporting leagues and college athletics. That trend was fans coming to games with paper bags over their heads, eye holes and mouth holes cut out, sometimes blinged up and with some statement of futility scrawled in magic marker or painted on a bag.

Paper or Plastic?

Once up a time, paper bags were much more commonplace. That’s what you brought home with you when you’d been out making groceries. Many younger Saints fans have likely never even heard the question “paper or plastic?” It’s not even clear where you’d get a paper bag these days, and you’d look mighty silly trying to pull off the bag on the head thing with your paper from Fresh Market or Whole Foods.

HOLLYWOOD, CA – JUNE 21: Comedian Murray Langston aka The Unknown Comic attends the Hollywood Improv and the Wyland Foundation mural unveiling and ‘Comics For Conservation’ benefit at Hollywood Improv on June 21, 2013 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

It’s long been known that paper bags are perhaps the best free cat toy out there. It was the Saints’ fanbase that made them iconic in sports.

The First Baghead

The Gong Show was an NBC daytime television show that ran from 1976 to 1978. It was a talent show on its face but was mostly farce and comedy. It was a huge hit in the brief time it was on the air.

One recurring guest on the show was the Unknown Comic who you can see in a YouTube clip at this link.  Murray Langston was a Canadian stand-up comedian whose shtick as the Unknown Comic was to perform with a bag over his head, eye holes and mouth hole cut out and was hugely popular at the time.

Some clever Saints fans, not wanting to be publicly identified as fans due to the horrible history of losing season after losing season took to mimicking the Unknown Comic and showed up to games with “Aints” written on their head gear.

Back to the Bag?

With the Saints’ recent records reverting back to more of those losing ways, it’s possible we’ll see a return of these characters in the Dome on Sundays. Hopefully though, things will turn around, and the cats of Who Dat Nation will get to keep their toys.

But it’s important to know when, why, and how this phenomenon started, with one of the greatest fanbases in all of the NFL.

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