Now is the winter of Saints fans’ discont — er, well, not discontent, but discombobulation.
And it’s an annual thing.
In the midst of two weeks of the yearly Super Bowl buildup and, except for 2010, this is the week it finally hits the fan that there really, really will be no Saints football again for another six months, that two other teams (often strongly disliked ones) are in the big game while the Who Dats are left out, and that even the NFL draft is still three full months away.
The withdrawal symptoms begin.
First, the fan tries to fill the void by soaking up every report from this week’s Senior Bowl in Mobile, Alabama. ESPN reports the Saints are interested in Lineman X! The Times-Picayune says Cornerback Y, seen talking to a Saints assistant on the sideline, is a possible day two draft choice! Some dude on Twitter says Wide Receiver Z is garnering “wows” from observers!
And your good friend in New York knows an inside source with the Giants who says the Giants want to out-hustle the Saints for a tight end, PDQ. But others say that player has a weight problem from eating too many M&Ms. Oh, and the superstar running back that is on everybody’s radar is said to be lazy at learning the playbook’s basic ABCs. He needs an Rx for a better attitude.
A discerning fan knows to put far more credibility in this newspaper’s sports reporters than on the third cousin of a Giants’ executive or on the Twitter dude. (Although, come to think of it, I heard the Twitter dude’s neighbor is really in the know.) Either way, though, we just must know how well the player from tiny Davidson College can hold his own with the behemoth from Ohio State.
Granted, not all Saints fans are quite so addicted. Still, even the less-addicted fans, the ones who wouldn’t know a “press man” coverage from a Cover Two, are probably talking at lunch or at a tavern at least once a week with another Louisianan about whether the team is more in need of a running back or, instead, of an offensive guard.
And will this finally, finally be the year when General Manager Mickey Loomis makes a big trade “down” for more draft picks rather than packaging several picks in order to move “up” the draft board?
The real question is, is this obsession, or even just a heavy predilection, unhealthy? Why do we care so much what big men do when crashing into each other on a ballfield? They won’t make our groceries any cheaper. They won’t fill the potholes on our streets. They won’t even make the roux thicken more quickly for our étouffée.
Well, I sit here looking at the Sir Saint decal on my desk that needs to replace the one that has peeled off my car window, and I look at my framed Sports Illustrated cover of Drew Brees holding his son aloft amid confetti. And I say, dadgummit, this is good. This is understandable, it’s fun and, in its own way, it really is healthy after all.
Not to get too much into psychoanalysis, but we all need mental and emotional “escapes” of one sort or another. We need to get away, on occasion, from pressures, from real-life concerns and from workaday routines. And while books and artistic hobbies and exercise and all sorts of other things probably should fill this need — in ways more directly salutary for us, more “constructive,” more conducive to our own, well, “character growth” — there’s still something none of those others accomplishes quite as well.
What our love of the Saints provides is not just escape but communal escape on a grand scale, and not just for an event (Jazz Fest) or a season (carnival/Mardi Gras), but year-round. It brings us together like nothing else can. And, in a way matched (but not exceeded) only perhaps by Green Bay’s Packers, who literally are owned by that small town’s populace, the Saints have provided an inspirational and even salvific rallying point.
I need not belabor the Saints’ role in spurring rebirth after Hurricane Katrina. We all know how important it was. We feel it in our marrows.
And we will forever be grateful, and forever be hopeful.
Meanwhile, I’m still not entirely sold on Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love, but let me go watch some more video of him in action. Telepathically, Mickey Loomis is sure to need my assessment ….