Tears flowed like the Southern Comfort at Bayou Bob’s in downtown Denver on Sunday night once New Orleans cornerback Tracy Porter picked off Peyton Manning for a lagniappe score and the Super Bowl clincher.
Two Louisiana ex-patriots, Meygan Hoffpauir and Connie Wood, hugged as they danced and the bar erupted in the “who dat?” cheer.
Hoffpauir, the 29-year-old daughter of Bayou Bob, weaved through the liquored-up crowd to the front of bar. She called for quiet from the partisan crowd decked in black-and-gold garb, beads and the fleur-de-lis.
“How many of you looked out at the snow this morning and thought, ‘How many times have I said, ‘It’ll be a cold day in Hell,’ ” she said, as the roar drowned out the end of her sentence — that the long-maligned Saints would someday wear the NFL’s crown.
Wood, 20 years removed from New Orleans, called the Super Bowl a “win-win” for her home city with Manning in the game.
“We grew up watching Archie quarterback,” she said of Manning’s father in her faded Crescent City accent. “We never gave up. This was a long time coming.”
In a Broncos town, fans sought refuge where their slim numbers could reach critical mass.
“It’s easy for me to cheer for a team that’s been through the struggles I’ve been through in my lifetime,” said waiter Drew Howell, a Detroit transplant and Lions fan, who wore a Saints jersey Sunday.
A few blocks away in Lower Downtown, the crowd at the Sports Column Bar and Grill, a baseball’s throw from Coors Field, was strewn with white- and-blue Colts jerseys.
The fans were confident, joking how they had “who-dat’ed” Saints fans out of the bar.
But even as Manning gave a pregame interview on the big-screen TVs around the bar, hardly any of the Indianapolis fans seemed to notice.
“Hey, we’ve been here before,” said Geoff Beckler, a transplant from Terre Haute, Ind., as a tone reserved for trash-talk rose in his voice. “We ain’t like ‘dem bayou beginners.’ “
At The Tilted Kilt, the Scottish-themed sports pub on the 16th Street Mall, the only uniform was the skimpy plaid skirts worn by the waitresses.
“This is a Denver Broncos town,” explained Scott Morrison, lifting a big glass of dark ale. “Why take sides?”
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
