The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Recently Tide and NFL Films got together and made many short team snip it’s of team color origins. The New Orleans Saints colors of black and gold are such an honorary one that I felt entitled to share.

Originally New Orleans wanted the colors of their professional football team to be something influenced by Mardi Gras, so this was the birth of the Saints popular gold coloration.

Previous Saints owner John Mecom actually wanted to add blue to the team’s uniform. Because it resembled the Chargers colors, the choice of blue was put aside. Funny enough decades later, the present day Saints received a former charger of their own, leading to their first Super Bowl victory.

Due to Mecom’s oil ties in New Orleans, the color black was chosen to represent oil. Hence the term “Black Gold” or better yet “Black and Gold.” The colors formed their own yin and yang. The choice of oil representing the team was not just that of the team, but as the city in a whole. So as it was, gold was the color of royalty and black represented a city, the symbol of “rebirth.” What we have left is the symbol, the Fleur de Lis.

A French symbol that was hung in all parts of New Orleans, the Fleur de Lis was a great “influence.” It evoked New Orleans in so many degrees. The most influential part was as stated in the short film, that fans in the 60′s could witness the same symbol worn with pride in to the 21st century and beyond.

So as New Orleans once rose “from the ashes”, those colors keep battling beyond all the skeptsism, eudring battles week by week.

The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Nice.

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Black&Gold.com reported this in an article (Jan 2010) outlining interesting FACTS about the Saints... just prior to their appearance in SB XLIV

Link: http://blackandgold.com/saints/24231...-straight.html

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

I always hear this "black gold" story and yet it strikes me as odd, that Zulu was using black and gold in New Orleans as early as the 1940s. NOW the Zulu colors are more like black and yellow, today, but back then it was black and gold, or black and golden tan (like the grass skirts they wear). The coconuts are still black and gold, or black, silver and gold.

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Black and old gold.

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Different version of the "blue" reasoning. I sort of buy this one a little more

"Black, along with old gold and white, has always been one of the team colors, but it wasn't the first choice of original majority owner John W. Mecom, Jr. His preference was for Mecom Blue, a medium shade which was used by all of his other investments. After the league office informed him that his proposed combination too closely resembled that worn by the San Diego Chargers, he settled on black as the primary color as a nod to his financial involvement in the petroleum industry. "Black gold" is a term synonymous with oil."
New Orleans Saints - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Charger or Power blue:
http://www.jerseys2u.org/images/Cust...lue_Jersey.jpg


Mecom Blue
http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com.../RLG18020a.JPG

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

And the Oilers went with white and baby blue. How strange.

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

I posted about this a long time ago.

It is very interesting and I was a bit ashamed that I didn't know our history as a team.

Good post!

Re: The Essence of Black and Gold or How the New Orleans Saints Got Their Colors
 

Black Gold. Gotta' love it!
And the Saints make it look good!