The Other Fifteen

Going into Sunday’s game, everyone had the subplot in the back of their minds about New Orleans recovery from the devastation of hurricane Katrina.  Only, for Louisiana natives that subplot was the main story.  While the rest of the country sits back and assumes that a sports team’s victory 5 years after a natural disaster is arbitrary, for the people of New Orleans and the entire Mississippi Delta this is the moment they’ve been waiting for.

Sports galvanizes people.  It brings us together.  It gives us hope.  It is a welcome distraction.  It brings us heroes.  It gives you something you can believe in.  And in no instance was this more true than in the case of the post-Katrina Saints.  In the wake of that disaster, the city turned to what was for a long time the only team in town.  A team that, like them, had been through hard times.  A team that they had stood by when times were tough.  And a team that they now needed to stand by them in their time of need.  That city needed something to be proud of.  Something to root for.  Something that it could celebrate.  People that it could look up to.  It needed underdogs-turned-heroes like Drew Brees, an injured castoff of a QB who signed with them for less money than other teams had offered because he felt that he could help the team and the city.  He has done both.  They needed people like Louisiana native Tracy Porter, who had a picture of the Louisiana Superdome shaved into his head the day before his game-clinching interception for a TD.  That was a symbol of New Orleans in its darkest days, a refugee shelter for its own fans, now being used as motivation for brighter days.  For healing.  For closure to a painful past.  For catharsis.

People can downplay the fact that a victory for a sports franchise can do much to heal a ravaged city.  But those people don’t understand what that team means to that town.  Or their stadium to the people who slept in it and now cheer in it.  Or those players to the people who they donate their time and money to.  Doubters don’t understand the need to believe in something bigger than yourself, or the need to be proud of where your from and how far you’ve come.  They don’t understand that when you have so little to feel good about, you cling to what little good you have left.  The Saints were that common good for New Orleans.  They were the one thing that survivors of that tragedy could put their hopes and dreams into, could look at with pride, could feel uplifted by, and finally feel good about themselves because the hope that they had clung to while their city was adrift has now come through for them when they needed it.  Celebrate, New Orleans, like only you know how.  You deserve it.  I have a feeling that this Mardi Gras is going to be the best yet.

The following pictures were taken by me 7 months after Katrina struck New Orleans.

This is a video of Bourbon Street after the Saints won the title: