The New Orleans football team has always had a fleur-de-lis on their helmets, so one day they had to be talked about in French too!
It’s now done. Télé-Louisiane, “the media of the Louisiana people”, according to its own description on the Twitter/X site, becomes the “exclusive French-language media” of the Saints, and will cover the daily life of the club in French.
In the medium term, the goal is even bigger: to broadcast, one day, entire Saints games in the language of Zachary Richard.
This would be a first, of course, since no NFL team has ever broadcast games in French in its own market.
“We are not there yet, because we will have to obtain the rights of the NFL for this purpose”, explains at the end of the screen Will McGrew, president and founder of Télé-Louisiane.
“At the moment, we will be broadcasting reports on the team before and after the games. But we know that there are more and more people who are interested in the French language in Louisiana. »
This is how the Saints chose to woo France and, by extension, the Francophonie. In Louisiana, there are today some 250,000 French speakers, according to the Center de la francophonie des Amériques.
This flirtation with our language is no coincidence, beyond the fleur-de-lys and the legend of Bobby Hébert. It’s also that the Saints have a very high-ranking person who is sympathetic to the cause: Gayle Benson, the owner of the club, who was a LaJaunie before the marriage, said Will McGrew.
“She is of Franco-Louisiana descent, and she, like many Louisianans here, has an attachment to France. As we are the only francophone media in Louisiana, we came into contact with the Saints, who have francophone roots and who are involved in the francophone community here. They chose France as part of this program, but it would then make sense for them to focus on Canada and Quebec. We’ll see. »
To that effect, Will McGrew is already well aware of Quebec’s love of four-try football. The 28-year-old is also well aware that Quebec is already well ahead of the rest of the Francophonie when it comes to its oval ball lexicon. We don’t say “touchdown” because we can say touched, we don’t say “running back” because we can say running back, and so on.
The good people of Télé-Louisiane take notes, it seems…
” Quite ! replies Will McGrew. Here, we love Quebecers, we admire you, because 40 or 50 years ago, Louisiana and Quebec were more or less in the same situation, and what you did that we did not do, your defense of the language, the Quiet Revolution and the Masters with us, all that is important.
“For us, anglicisms are normalized, but we think it’s important to do things in French… We already have a lot of Quebecers who write to us to suggest translations!” »
