The best game I never saw

Anyone who knows me knows about my love for New Orleans. It is simply my favorite city in the country and probably the world (though Dublin can make quite an argument.) There are very few cities that feel like home to me even after I spend years living there. New Orleans is just a place that makes me feel like I am always at home there and typically I head down there once a year just to reconnect.

Obviously this means that I follow the Saints with interest and consider them to be my second favorite team after the Bears, whose most recent season is not worth discussing. Or at least I can’t discuss it without sobbing uncontrollably. I like the team and the fans and the fact that despite a history of failure everyone keeps on trying to do their best in the hope that this time would be different.

So I was extremely happy to see that my Saints were in the NFC Championship game tonight. However, in continuing with my “never be home” schedule I was stuck on a plane for the entire game. Took off when the game started and got into my car right as the fourth quarter ended. This meant that I was able to listen to the New Orleans announcers call the overtime with the game ending just as I pulled into my garage. One of the most exciting drives of my life.

I can’t tell you if the calls were good or bad. I don’t know if those interference calls were crap or that it wasn’t a catch. I can’t even say if the NFL overtime rules are fair or that Minnesota had enough chances to win the game and just blew it. All I know is that once the kick went through I have never heard such a scream of joy come from announcers. It was just like my reaction when the White Sox made the World Series; just a sudden outburst of hysterical laughter. One of the announcers yelled “Pigs have flown, hell has frozen over, the Saints are in the Super Bowl!” The joy in his voice was contagious.

You are going to hear a lot of talk about how the team has helped New Orleans post Katrina. It is very easy to be cynical about it. I mean, what does a football team have to do with getting a major city to recover from a natural disaster? But I have met a lot of people from New Orleans in my life and they truly have used the Saints as their rallying point. The team was their escape from the challenge of rebuilding and a point of pride for the city. It was why there was a focus on rebuilding the Superdome in that first year. The city needed to point to something and say that we are back. We were knocked down but we got back up. That is what this game means to the city. We are back. We have rebuilt. And I couldn’t be happier.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Freddy Jones Band “The Freddy Jones Band”
2) Rhett Miller “The Believer”
3) Jack Johnson “In Between Dreams”
4) The Jayhawks “Tomorrow the Green Grass”
5) Robbie Fulks “Revenge”