My Analysis of Why Cayenne Died at UL:

[Swamp]

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Burn in hell Cayenne. Wip-eeeeeee

[JamesTheJeweler]

our best mascot was still the Cajun Man even if snowflakes said it was racist, of course somehow in the US coon ass became a racist word even though the people who it refers to don't see it that way

There was nothing cajun about that mascot. Nothing. If you showed it to anyone outside of the school, who would say, "oh look, a Cajun man." No one is the answer.

[JamesTheJeweler]

Cayenne was a terrible mascot. It just looked terrible and scared children. The flaming d!ldo as many have called it

[CajunVic]

Cayenne was a terrible mascot. It just looked terrible and scared children. The flaming d!ldo as many have called it

well, it’s confirmed, you were not Cayenne

[CajunEXPRESS]

The chicken was a grown man an alumni and not affiliated with the school at all. He made up all of his own skits. The person inside of cayenne was a young student probably not as much confidence and not quit as sure of him / herself.

You can make what ever kind of suit you want it’s the person in the costume that will make or break it.

Copying is the highest form of flattery. There’s certain things that can be done over and over again never getting old. Whatever the spirit leader is they need to use some of the Cajun Chicken tried and true skits. Paying off a zebra is funny no matter who does it. Of course they need to develop timing skills and personalities.

[CouillonCinema]

Stupid is relative. See the list below.

https://www.si.com/college/2019/08/1...scots-rankings

These made the top-10

Attachment 19676
Attachment 19677
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Attachment 19679

It's all about what works, and Cayenne was well on his way to becoming the next crazy mascot to make it big:

https://www.yardbarker.com/college_f...405296#slide_4




Attachment 19680

I WILL rise again.

I think an important note to take from all the mascots you mentioned is their origin vs how Cayenne created. I encourage everyone to research the college mascots you admire and look at how they were adopted.

Three out of the four mascots pictured were an individual effort by a students, or students, to bring entertainment to their peers. Once they won over the students, sometimes taking years, their admins adopted the character.

This is also one of my biggest criticisms of Cayenne. Hardly anyone can tell us exactly who came up with the character. And if they did know who came up with him, could they say where is that person now? Being unable to answer those questions led to the in-organic origin of Cayenne. So when he was put up on the chopping block, there was no one around that cared enough to save him.

I will never go back and forth with anyone's appreciation of Cayenne. I appreciate him to an extent. But the truth of the matter is, he's gone. He's gone because the fans did not like him enough to keep him. The work I'm putting into the next character is so that the majority of the fanbase will like him enough to keep him around; because he will be created organically.

[CouillonCinema]

Several of you have mentioned, "it's the person in the suit that makes the suit." That is true, but to an extent. Most university mascots are run by a small group of students, rather than just one. Together, they take shifts putting on the suit for different events. They would also be in charge of coming up with skits for the fanbase. You can think of them sort of like a school sketch comedy group.

The importance of entertainment and building out the character is why I wrote skits for Albineaux in the Phase 2 presentation.

[CajunVic]

#makeAlLouisianaMascot

[CajunFun]

Bringing my detailed thread I just posted on Twitter onto here just in case any of you diehard fans would be interested.

This thread is not a critique of anyone’s feelings for the character. I myself have a fondness for him. I saw him help expand the brand of UL across the country. That is why while doing my Albineaux research, I had to look at why his predecessor failed. These are my hypothesis from lightest offense to worse.

Which Cayenne? The thing was a disaster even in the planning stages.

Authément would sometimes drop small bombs when I spoke with him. One of them was, "I told them I wanted an image for the university. They brought back a sports logo." 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.

RaginCajuns flames 450.gif

It was a mess, looked like it should have been on the set of Grease. But we got our Saints logo.

Saints Cajuns Fleur Overlap 360.jpg

And remember this beauty? It was called a 'peelable,' something we could stick everywhere.

CajunsPepper.png

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:

SME Crop.jpg

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.

Cayenne1.JPG

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.

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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.

Cayenne3b.jpg

I have more stories to tell, but I gotta go.

[Turbine]

The vast knowledge of CajunFun knows no bounds.

Man that is some good historical synopsis.

Thanks