Friday, February 5, 2010 - I’m not from New Orleans. I never lived or worked in New Orleans. So I will admit that I’m not really an expert about the city and it’s people.
But one of my closest friends is from New Orleans, and a few years ago he moved back to his town to work for the Times-Picayune newspaper. As a result, over the last couple years I’ve visited the city about a half-dozen times. Some of the trips have been for both business and pleasure; while I spend a week with David and his family, I also work on freelance articles about Big Easy-related topics.
Regardless of the exact reason for the venture, each one has been a total blast, largely because New Orleans is truly a unique city, unlike no other urban area in the country, and perhaps the world. I’ve grown to love New Orleans, and I can’t wait to get back there again. I’ve even thought occasionally about moving down to the Crescent City for a little while.
One by-product of my friendship with David and my trips to New Orleans has been my embrace of the Saints, the city’s historically beleaguered NFL team that for decades, well, stunk up the joint.
I want to note here that I became a Saints fan several years ago, too, so I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon now that the team has reached its first Super Bowl, which is being played this Sunday.
But more importantly, I want to note that it’s all for real. Every article you’ve read, every TV broadcast you’ve watched that has examined the relationship of the Saints to their home city and hometown fans is not an exaggeration.
The Saints do, in fact, mean more to their fans than most non-New Orleanians could ever understand. The bond between the local community and the team is extraordinary and completely unique, much like the city itself.
As many news reports have noted, that bond has been even stronger since Hurricane Katrina. The city’s devastated residents — all of them — have rallied around the Saints and come together like never before. In a city known for its sometimes rancorous cultural diversity and its persistent governmental corruption, the Saints have been able to bring every city resident — black and white, rich and poor, white-collar and blue-collar, men and women — together behind a common purpose, a uniting symbol of their city.
I’ve seen this first-hand. Although I’ve never been to a Saints game, I’ve been in the city enough to understand the devotion New Orleans residents have to their team — and the devotion the team has for their fans.
In many, if not most NFL cities, a large chunk of the population is devoted to the hometown team, but many other fans swear allegiance to a variety of other teams as well. In upstate New York, the Buffalo Bills command the most fans, but you’ll also see lots of other teams — the Patriots, the Steelers, the Cowboys, the Giants, even the hated Dolphins —on jackets and hats and shirts.
I’ve lived in several areas of the country, and at every one of my stops, it’s been the same way with that local team — the biggest number of football fans loves the local squad, but there’s enough followers of other teams to present a nice overall mix.
But New Orleans is different. In the Big Easy, EVERYONE is a Saints fan, regardless of race, ethnicity, neighborhood, gender or socioeconomic status. There are no fans of other teams. The entire city and almost all of its people is devoted to a single team, THEIR team.
But Saints fandom is unique in a tangential way to that. Around the country, you’ll almost never find a random Saints fan, someone who just happens to like the Saints. No one arbitrarily chooses to become a Saints fan.
Just about very Saints fan in this nation is a fan because they have some strong connection to the Big Easy — they're either New Orleans natives or former residents or family members or just people (like me) with strong emotional ties to the city.
In my recent memory I can recall encountering one — just one — Saints fan in Rochester, and judging from his deep Creole drawl I knew he was from Louisiana.
My friend David was in the Superdome for the Saints’ recent win in the NFC Championship game, an overtime thriller that sent the city into pandemonium. David was at the Superdome for the game, and when I texted him in the hours after the Saints win, he wrote back: “The tears are just now drying.”
When we talked later that week, David described the scene at the Superdome — needless to say, he wasn’t the only one shedding tears of joy. After Saints kicker Garrett Hartley booted the game-winning field goal through the uprights, a huge throng of fans poured out of the dome and moved its way toward the French Quarter.
The streets of the city’s most famous neighborhood, David said, were completely packed with a mass of swelling humanity. The noise was thunderous, the booze flowing freely, the mood almost inhumanly boisterous. David has been to many editions of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but he told me that the celebration after the Saints win was crazier than any Fat Tuesday he’d ever seen.
Eventually David met up with his brother, Daniel, a staff member at the Historic New Orleans Collection. The brothers embraced and shed more tears. Daniel looked at David and said with sincerity and certainty: “This is the most important day in the history of this city.”
And that’s coming from a professional historian who also happens to be a New Orleans native. Of course, Daniel was probably inebriated at the time, but his opinion probably wouldn’t have changed even if he had been stone cold sober.
The outside world simply can’t understand how much that day, two weeks ago, meant to the residents of New Orleans, how much sheer joy the Saints’ victory — one that has so far capped what is already the most successful season in franchise history — brought to a populace beleaguered by floods and corrupt mayors and poverty and racial tension and crime and other troubles.
Even if the Saints lose to the Colts in the Super Bowl this Sunday, the team will already have delivered to their fans one of the greatest, most unifying, most desperately needed moments in New Orleans’ long and colorful history.
Every last tear, every last embrace, every last shot at Tipitina’s, every last “Who Dat!” — it’s all for real.
Ryan Whirty
Ontario, NY
Ryan Whirty can be reached at rwhirty218@yahoo.com.
