This Saturday night at Cajun Field, our Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns football team will be kicking off its Sun Belt Conference schedule against Coastal Carolina.

Their mascot is the Chanticleers. (It's pronounced SHON-ti-clears by the way...SHONTS for short.)

Which leads me to the question that many of us have asked ourselves: WHAT IN THE HECK IS A CHANTICLEER???

Looking at their logo, it looks like some mean chicken you would have found at a cock ring in Duson circa 1982.

Coastal Carolina University
Coastal Carolina University
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The real answer is a little more involved than that though.

In the early 1960s, a group of Coastal Carolina students and their English professor had the idea for a new school mascot. At the time, they were known as the Trojans.

The school was also a branch of the University of South Carolina, so many people were pushing for a nickname that was more closely related to USC's Gamecock. Thus, the Chanticleer was born.

But why choose something called a Chanticleer? Remember that whole "English professor" part? Well...

Chanticleer comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. More specifically, he comes from the Nun's Priest Tale, a story within Canterbury Tales. The Chanticleer is a proud and fierce rooster who dominates the barnyard.

So there you go, the Chanticleer mascot is a fictitious rooster that comes from some students and a professor.

See kids, you can make a difference!

 

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