John W. Mecom Jr.: Dave Dixon was screaming about we had to have Mardi Gras colors, but they were the ugliest things in the world on a football uniform. So in order to pacify him and us, too, because it was a consideration, we built different color combinations and tried them out at Tulane Stadium, and sat at different points of the stadium just to see what it looked like and what would it film like, also—what it would transpose itself back to the audience. It was just an appealing color. It was different from most anything else in the league. At that particular time, too, we weren’t, it wasn’t merged with the AFC, so we weren’t in competition for color with Oakland. They had black, but silver. It actually took a while, and I had no idea we would go through that much trouble. And the best one we came up with was black and gold.

[“I Feel Lat (Black and Gold)” by Choppa plays.]