I am a football fan much as I am a NASCAR fan in the sense of my husband is the true fan and I have been drawn into it over the years. If he’s not home, I won’t necessarily turn a game on, but if there isn’t anything else on that I am particularly interested in, I will. Now, for those who have only been watching the New Orleans Saints play when they actually started to be contenders for the Superbowl, there are many years prior to that when the notion they would ever be contenders was essentially absurd. At that point, what fans hoped for was just a winning year or a not as bad a losing year. Playoffs? – no, not realistically. The real slump was back when fans would show up to games with paper sacks over their heads; nose, mouth and eyeholes cut and “The Ain’ts” written on the sack. On the other hand, we’re talking New Orleans, so fundamentally, win or lose, there was a reason to party. Understanding this was part of being a Saints’ fan and when they brought a new head coach in that was supposed to “fire the team up” and who was known for his hard-nosed approach of “winning is everything” attitude, that was obviously not as good a match as anticipated. He didn’t stay for long, although I suspect if he put the experience into perspective, he recognized why it didn’t work out.

Interestingly, about the time the Saints started having fairly reliable winning seasons, Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the city and the Saints temporarily went to Houston. This, too, had an emotional impact on the city and while there was criticism about pushing to get the Superdome repaired with all the other damage that people had suffered, there were imminently practical reasons to do so. The return of the Saints gave a boost economically and emotionally and it was 2009 (right at 4 years later) when the team stunned the city by not only making their first appearance at the Superbowl, but winning as the underdogs. “Who Dat?” became common lexicon and it is unlikely that the term “The Ain’ts” will be used again. However, they did not play well on the road this year and with last night’s defeat, their season is over for now. I don’t know yet who I will be rooting for, so I’ll have to see who’s left in the line-up.