My Analysis of Why Cayenne Died at UL:

[JMV JustMyView]

Give me Poo Poo Broussard all day.

[Turbine]

This is why Cayenne died.

It can't represent.

[ZoomZoom]

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.

Attachment 19695

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

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

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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:

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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.

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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.

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

Ah the last one. Around our crowd, known as “Nipple head”.

[JamesTheJeweler]

Geezus. I forgot about "cajun" man. Toss up between which one is worse, Cajun man or Cayenne.

[JamesTheJeweler]

Stupid is relative. See the list below.

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

These made the top-10

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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




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I WILL rise again.

Bro.please stop. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[HoustonCajun]

Bro.please stop. ��������

When we changed from Bulldogs to Ragin Cajuns, we had a stream of horrible mascots from Cajun Man to Cayenne to even the Cajun Chicken who had great antics but in no way sufficed as a mascot with no relationship whatsoever to the university.

How often do we overlook the obvious? We have an on-campus swamp with live Gators and a football field called The Swamp? We have built-in tradition and ignore it. We have some wonderful depictions of a Gator mascot that we can choose from and even have a costumed Gator on the sidelines and we can't even agree on what should be our perfect mascot that incorporates everything historical about our great university.

Looks like nothing will be done this year in that regard with football season just a couple of weeks away. But, we can start working on agreed and acceptable changes and incorporate timing of a roll out of all needed changes with the opening of our new stadium next year and create unbelievable excitement about UL athletics.

New OLOL Stadium
New Gator mascot
New costumed Gator mascot
New CAJUNS logo - time to get rid of the old block Ragin Cajuns
New uniforms for all sports with Cajuns logo (we are already doing this now on a limited basis)
Lay out a statewide and national marketing campaign introducing all of our changes and possibly incorporate that into a fund raising campaign for UL athletics