Who Dat?
Now, I want to be clear that I'm not a sports nut. Not by a long shot. I'm not one of those guys who grew up religiously reading the sports section of the newspaper every day or who planted himself on the couch for six-hour Sunday afternoon stretches with beer and chips and a round of NFL games lined up to while away my day of rest. I admit to feeling guilty, almost un-Canadian, for not knowing the rankings in the NHL in any particular week. But something's admittedly changed these past four years. Yes, something has certainly changed.
And so you can imagine how I struggle now to explain, sitting here in my New Orleans Saints jersey that I've refused to remove since the Saturday before Super Bowl Sunday, how it is that I've become a diehard Saints fan. And it isn't just me. I've never witnessed anything like what's happening in this town. Our beat up, half-drowned, bullet-riddled, knifed, alcohol-poisoned city-that-care-forgot, left to die four years ago, is not just up and standing but strutting cocky in one giant second line that stretches right across the United States and into Canada. This Super Bowl was the most highly watched TV event in history, and if you are to believe the polls, nine out of 10 North Americans were rooting for New Orleans. And we can feel it down here. We are floating on it down here.
I've never believed before that something as seemingly one-dimensional as a professional sports team could do things like bring racial harmony and psychic well-being to a city known for its racial divide and its almost casual brutality. Before Hurricane Katrina in 2005 I would have loudly scoffed at such a notion. But something has happened here, and it began long before this past Sunday.
Many of us felt we had little to cheer about in the months after Katrina. In those desperate days, I didn't, honestly, give a damn if the Saints organization was going to move on to greener pastures in another city, and I couldn't imagine we'd ever witness jubilation again in a Superdome that was the site of so much hellish misery. The city had much more important fish to fry, like trying to rebuild an infrastructure that was on life support before the storm.
But then new head coach Sean Payton, followed by wounded quarterback Drew Brees, came to town. Payton had never been a head coach before, and Brees had just gone through serious surgery and couldn't lift his throwing arm above his shoulder. Payton and Brees both immediately bought homes in New Orleans itself, in Uptown, not in some gated and safe suburban community like most NFL players and staff like to do in this country. Right away, our population sensed something was different.
Payton, with his elfish grin, reminds my wife Amanda (who, I admit, has always been a far bigger football fan than me, and yes, it's a touch emasculating) of that really smart kid back in grade school who had a lot more going on than most just below the surface. And he, in consultation with Brees, went to work immediately, repopulating the Saints team, creating a perfect storm of misfits and undesirables not seen since The Dirty Dozen. Players like Jeremy Shockey, who was let go by the New York Giants with a broken leg, Marques Colston, who was one of the last to be chosen in the draft that year, and Pierre Thomas, who didn't even make the draft at all, these were suddenly the new faces of the Saints post-Katrina. In 2006, just one year after the hurricane with a new roof on the dome, Payton's leadership and Brees' newly healed arm led the Saints to their first NFC championship game. Not bad, eh? Despite their losing to the Chicago Bears, the thrill felt in the air of New Orleans was truly the first since Katrina. So much more was to follow.
Move ahead to 2010. Amanda and I went to the French Quarter a couple of weeks ago to watch the Saints play in their second NFC championship and to soak up the mood of the city. The Quarter was nuts before the game. We'd dreamed of tickets to this one, which, since the Saints had the best record, was being played in the Superdome, but scalpers were asking - and getting - outrageous prices.
After, when the Saints had actually won in a squeaker, the Quarter, and all of New Orleans, went nuts. We happily fought our way out of the French Quarter and to our car, high-fiving and hugging total strangers on streets you don't normally want to be walking on after dark. There are dozens of examples of cities winning big sporting events only to erupt into chaos and rioting. But not a sniff of that worry crept out that evening. The Times Picayune, our local paper, reported the following: no violence before, during, or after the Saints NFC victory. Unheard of in a city that is, as I've mentioned, known for its almost casual violence.
Super Bowl tickets are akin to the Holy Grail. To score one means that you are either well-connected, rich, or really lucky, or maybe all three. An old friend who Amanda and I had lost track of years ago and with whom we'd recently reconnected, e-mailed me the day after with an amazing gift: two tickets to the big game. We couldn't believe it. We were going. Strangely, though, a niggling doubt that we'd miss something magical, essential even, almost kept us from accepting.
But, of course, we went. And that word that I dared not speak, that any of the citizens of New Orleans wouldn't dare speak despite the great desire to all season long, was finally freed. And it has fluttered off tongues like confetti across New Orleans for a few days now. Destiny. Amanda and I laughed when, minutes after the New Orleans Saints, in their 44th year and having just won the 44th Super Bowl, both said to each other at the same moment, "I wish we were home right now."
If there are real-life fairy tales, real life metaphors, this is pretty close. A city brought to its knees and nearly destroyed just four years ago is now a world champion. A bunch of ragamuffins of all races learned to not just get along but to soar together. The misfits found each other, and through their own individual and tough experiences, did what everyone said couldn't be done. A wounded population came together and lifted a team to its greatest achievement.
Will things like racial harmony and equality and social justice and kindness now rule the day in the Big Easy? Please. But next time I'm walking down a street and the guy walking towards me gives me the willies, I'll be able to shout out, "Who Dat!" and know by his immediate response it's all good. The next time we get news that government funding to fix the levees for real continues to remain elusive, we'll shout "Who Dat!" to a stranger and at least get a smile back. And if something as simple and grammatically incorrect can do this at least, we misfits will keep pushing on.
***
About the writer
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian with Irish, Scottish and Métis roots. His published works include the acclaimed novels Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce. He divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.