NEW ORLEANS — The sun spilled off the Superdome’s rounded roof, splashing the tailgaters hoisting beers as frosty as Tiger’s marriage. A waft of gumbo and hope hovered above the Saints fans this December day; Katrina, for an afternoon, was an afterthought. She still looms, four-plus years after she slapped around this proud town, but New Orleanians have found faith in an old friend.
“I live in the downtown area and had 10 to 11 feet of water in my home (from the flooding),” said Jamar Alexander, standing a few first downs from the Superdome. “My home had to be totally rebuilt. We needed an outlet. The anticipation of the Saints coming back was just so big. It gave us some sense of normalcy.”
Before Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Saints were important here. After Katrina, the Saints became imperative in helping to lift a battered city’s spirits.
New Orleans is the top seed in the NFC playoffs, and, heading into Saturday’s second-round game against the Arizona Cardinals, one wonders which is more miraculous — what the Saints have accomplished on the field, or what they’ve accomplished for this community.
“The connection that we have with our fans is unlike any other in the league, just because of what’s happened here the last five years and what we’ve all been through — together,” Saints quarterback Drew Brees said. “I signed here six months post-Katrina as a free agent, as did a majority of the guys in the locker room, and we all kind of were part of that rebuilding, not only of this organization but of our careers, because a lot of us, you might call us castoffs or castaways.
“We were together as an organization, as a team, as a city — all kind of rebuilding together, all kind of leaning on each other.”
In New Orleans, where footballs lay in cribs next to newborns, suffering is passed down to generations like an old watch. From the inaugural 1967 season until 2004, the Saints won one playoff game. Then came 2005. And Katrina. Suffering redefined.
After a magical 2006 run to the NFC championship, New Orleans narrowly missed the playoffs the next two seasons, but this past season the Saints started 13-0, locked up a No. 1 seed and are favored to make their first Super Bowl appearance.
En route, they seemed to invent new ways to win. After a wild overtime victory at Washington, Brees was asked to explain the inexplicable comeback. It had to be New Orleans voodoo or something, right?
“I don’t know about voodoo, but I definitely believe in destiny,” he said, adding, “Maybe it’s our time.”
It’s party time
The exodus begins on Sunday afternoons. Soon, thousands of strangers arrive, uniting in a sea of black and gold — and black and white. A community commences, no, not for a Saints game, but to welcome home the Saints’ chartered plane after a road game. Thousands. They tossed footballs and talked football, occasionally bursting into the chant: “Who dat say dey gonna beat them Saints!”
When the team finally arrived, the players drive their SUVs, one by one, between the barricades thwarting the frenzied fans. It’s a scene comparable only to a Mardi Gras parade. Or a papal visit.
“It’s crazy, absolutely crazy,” Brees said after one return visit this season. “It was like a block party turned into Bourbon Street.”
It’s at times difficult to gauge the passion of sports fans, but consider this. During the Saints-Patriots game this season, Nielsen ratings showed that 84 percent of TVs in New Orleans were tuned to the game. At kickoff, the city looks like a ghost town. One day at Fat Harry’s bar, where if you drink enough Abita everyone really knows your name, the talk shifted to Saints in the Super Bowl.
“If that happens,” the bar’s Norm Peterson said, “this city will shut down.”
As Brees goes, so go the Saints. Few athletes have ever been better suited for a city than Brees in post-Katrina New Orleans. Handsome and heartfelt, he isn’t just the Saints’ quarterback, he’s New Orleans’ quarterback. He and his family live in Uptown New Orleans, a historic part of this historic town.
He happily embraces his role as the city’s unofficial mayor, spearheading charity work and spawning T-shirts that read, “What Would Breesus Do?” Oh, and he’s really good. He led the NFL in TD passes and passer rating. Perhaps the only thing Brees has done wrong was wear a seersucker jacket to a news conference after Labor Day, a no-no in “Nola.”
Like father, like son
Michael Kolb, father and son, watched Saints games together this season. Father would watch from his living room, while his Web cam captured the game and beamed it, via Skype, to Tikrit, Iraq, where his son watched on a laptop at 3 a.m.
“It’s surreal,” said Kolb Jr., an Army soldier who returned home in December. “We’d have a mission at 7-8 in the morning and I’d be wide awake because of the win. The game completely pumps you up — it gets you motivated beyond belief.”
The Kolbs wore matching Saints gear the day of the Saints-Cowboys day, when the sun-splashed tailgaters arrived at high noon, seven hours before kickoff.
A woman wearing sequin-laced fleurs-de-lis mixed the gumbo and mixed the cocktails. A car stereo blared “Super Bowl Mambo,” a clairvoyant classic here this year.
At the tailgate, the bubbly Debbie Waguespack, 61, bounced around the tailgate like a girl on Christmas morning. She spoke in a staccato, Cajun-type accent, screaming with joy: “Ooooh, Lord! We can’t wait to see them come out. We’ve been in this stadium with fans wearing paper bags on their heads, and every game this year, my daughter looks at me and said, ‘Mama, can you believe this?’ And I said: ‘I knew it was coming, baby! It’s destiny for them.’
“It’s just breathtaking. You believe in miracles? I’m a walking miracle. I had a liver transplant two years ago. And that’s a miracle out there.”
She pointed proudly toward the Superdome.
“And I’m going to witness it. I always told my daughter, ‘Baby, I might not be alive to see them go to the Super Bowl, so come tell me where I’m layin.’ But you know what? I might see them go. Don’t you love that?
That was a wish. I said, “They’re going to make it someday, I promise.’ “
Benjamin Hochman: bhochman@denverpost.com or 303-954-1294
