If nothing else, this football season has revealed that there are, in fact, Bayou Bengals native to Louisiana.

Before it was just urban legend, mostly a lazy mistake made by out-of-state broadcasters trying to be “in the know,” but really just giving themselves away as “not from around here” with some “Bayou Bengals” reference when they really meant the LSU Tigers.

You can never convince them otherwise.

But I can’t recall any LSU fan or anybody connected with the school ever uttering the phrase Bayou Bengals.

Until now.

They are alive and well, suddenly running rampant.

It does have a ring to it, pretty convenient with much of Louisiana suddenly in the secondary fan market and pulling like crazy for the Cincinnati Bengals, mostly due to former Tiger Joe Burrow’s presence.

It’s an easy bandwagon to jump on, a great underdog story under any circumstances. With Burrow leading the parade, it’s all that more fun.

Perfect.

But now a rotten Apple has turned up to threaten this Who Dat-to-Who Dey relationship.

Eli Apple. Remember him?

Apple had a few moments in two seasons with the Saints, who traded with the Giants for him. But for the most part he was one of those hold-your-breath cornerbacks prone to biting on any hint of a head fake.

Few knew he was in Cincinnati until after the Bengals beat the Titans to get into today’s AFC championship, suddenly in danger of going from 4-11-1 last year straight to this year’s Super Bowl.

That was OK. No news is usually a good thing when Apple is in your secondary.

It was postgame last week when social media lined up with Apple’s “heat of the moment” to announce Apple’s presence.

His first Twitter missive was the dilemma he faced in deciding whether he hated Giants or Saints fans the most.

Well, OK.

“Prolly the saints but It’s close wit the giants it’s a toss up,” he tweeted while artfully dodging spell check.

He wasn’t done with the analysis, of course.

“New Orleans is the dirtiest smelliest city …” he continued.

Yeah, and your point is? Part of the charm. No harm done. But he wasn’t done.

New Orleans “has the worst food ever,” he further tweeteth.

Whoa. Now them’s fighting words. Are you sure it was New Orleans you were in?

“It’s that swine and crawfish thts killin yall brains,” he explained.

At least he didn’t say “crawdads” — another creature that, contrary to foreign correspondents, doesn’t exist in Louisiana.

But maybe he hasn’t heard the whole story. If it wasn’t for crawfish — the boiled version of which Ed Orgeron used as the bait to lure Burrow to Louisiana — then LSU never wins the 2019 national championship, Burrow never wins the Heisman and he isn’t the first draft pick for the Bengals, who would probably still be stuck on 2-14 without him.

So Eli, put that in your pot and boil it.

And try to keep a low profile today.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com