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Win or lose, the Saints playing in the Super Bowl is like a healing, a laying on of hands for New Orleans, La. As I wrote on Twitter February 4, followed by hash tags #whodat and #Saints, "Super Bowl mania hangs in the air, palpable like Mardi Gras beads in trees, like August here, thick and hot, like a good rain."
Those words are true. We're going to bed down here in NOLA hearing "Who Dat!" on the news and waking up to the same as the number of days to Super Bowl 44 decrease. We're dancing in the streets and weeping with smiles that Hurricane Katrina didn't kill this city after all. Business watchers say that this Saints-to-Super-Bowl, fleur-de-lis, who-dat air is a wondrous blast of life into New Orleans's lungs both economically and psychically.
Yes, we are so shamelessly enraptured that along with Mardi Gras festivities, Super Bowl joy is "overshadowing the mayor's race" in which citizens cast votes today. Our shouting and leaping even took over national news shows: Good Morning America's Robin Roberts reported "New Orleans: From Katrina to Super Bowl 44." Roberts is the younger sister of WWL TV New Orleans news co-anchor Sally-Ann Roberts, and both women remember the days when their father, Lawrence, lamented that the Saints seemed to excel at "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."
That video ends with two sports analysts choosing the Indianapolis Colts to win Sunday, but they add that Saints fans shouldn't lose heart. They analysts promise that they're always wrong as Roberts turns to the New Orleans crowd live and fudges the truth, telling them the experts picked the Saints to win.
Cheers erupt and any onlooker who knows what the Saints and New Orleans have gone through over the years understands fans' rejection of loser talk. Beside "Who Dat!" another slogan for Saints fans has been one powerful word, "Believe!"
Rita Benson LeBlanc is a believer. She is part owner and executive vice president of the New Orleans Saints and is being hailed as one of the most powerful women in professional sports today. Yesterday, she spoke to CBS and echoed reports that Sunday's Super Bowl is not simply a game but a symbol of New Orleans being a city of survivors.
Maintaining faith -- betting on the Saints for more than 40 years, blessing the boys in Black 'n Gold even when people called them the Aints and grumbling fans attended games with paper bags over their heads, stubbornly returning to flooded land -- local Saints supporters see the team's journey to the Super Bowl as the natural reward of the faithful's long suffering. As recently as last year, the city successfully fought for the team, wooing its owner Tom Benson to keep the Saints in the Superdome and New Orleans through 2025.
The first payoff for sticking with the team, perhaps, was the city and State of Louisiana sewing up the deal to host the Super Bowl in 2013. Next, with the team's winning season, New Orleans saw a boost to its economy even before the Saints were Super Bowl bound.
As Super Bowl euphoria infects Saints local fans with all kinds of songs such as "Bring 'Em to the Dome," or "Get Crunk" and lovers of the city around the world join in the dance, kindred spirits flock to New Orleans. A NOLA.com reporter blogs that while the Super Bowl is being played in Miami, New Orleans hotels began to fill up as soon as the Saints won the National Football Conference game against the Vikings in January.
If early signs are any indication, hotels may see a bit of that spending, too. Calls for reservations began pouring into the Royal Sonesta Hotel almost instantly after Garrett Hartley's field goal in overtime cemented the Saints' position in the NFL's championship game, said Al Groos, the hotel's general manager. The hotel's balcony suites facing Bourbon Street, which don't typically sell out on a Sunday during the first weekend of Mardi Gras, were the first to go, Groos said.
"As soon as that ball went through the goal posts, the phone was ringing off the hook,
