Which Cayenne? The thing was a disaster even in the planning stages.
Authément would sometimes drop small bombs when I spoke with him.
"I told them I wanted an image for the university. They brought back a sports logo." One of them was, In their defense, what he was asking was way over their pay-grade, and even outside of their educational backgrounds.
The logos-- which as discussed, added yellow to our colors, with an explanation that it was 'vermilion'-- created a number of problems. The company who designed it for us did really nice 1- and 2-color logos for other colleges and a number of pro teams (Atlanta Hawks, Boston Bruins, quite a few others). I happened to run into one of the people who worked on our logo. He didn't have much nice to say. He explained that the people in charge kept insisting on 'something like the Saints. ' but with a lot of heat, and so they finally gave us this.
It was a mess, looked like it should have been on the set of
Grease. But we got our Saints logo.
And remember this beauty? It was called a 'peelable,' something we could stick everywhere.
And if you wish to know how little the graphics company thought of us, here is a screen-shot from their website, listing their clients:
Also, there were the flame numbers that we paid for. they had to be retired, because they were illegible on our uniforms.
And with all that came Cayenne. Some of the locals objected; the word 'Cayenne' is from an Arawak word 'Guiana' (notice the similarities), and except that it became the name for French Guyana, it has no connection to us. In addition, it is an inaccurate stereotype of our food: traditionally Cajun/Creole cooking has a touch of pepper, but not much. This seemed to associate us with Mexican, Indian Vindaloo, Szechuan, and other cuisines.
Next, a mascot typically costs $8-10K. We spent $25K.
$10K of that came from the students, who were told they would be involved in the process, and meet with the designer. They were excluded. The SGA President at the time said she wanted their money back. I never found out what happened about that.
We hired a Disney artist and when the artist sent the design to the costumers, the latter reported that, as designed, it was impossible. Further comedies of error appeared along the way.
Anyway, here is the first Cayenne; despite an extensive search for I did years ago for a good photo, this was the best I found.
He was quickly nick-named something we can't type here, but think of the cartoon bird named 'Woody.' When we played LSU that year, you can imagine the jokes built around that off-color nickname.
So there was $25K gone. Then they went to the second Cayenne, that opened this thread.
Attachment 19665
Now, one of Authément's stipulations was that he wanted something that wouldn't scare the kids. This, however, scared the ever-lovin'
merde out of the kids. I was taking my 5 year-old son to games; he got one eyeful of that thing, and spent the rest of the game whipping his head around, making sure it wasn't sneaking up behind him. Perhaps that's why he never really enjoyed going to games with me.
Finally, there is the third addition, slightly less "He-e-e-re's Johnny!!" looking, but still pretty bad.
I have more stories to tell, but I gotta go.
Re: My Analysis of Why Cayenne Died at UL:
Originally Posted by CajunNation
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