Well I NEVER thought I would actually type this out but the Saints are going to the SUPERBOWL...yes, the New Orleans Saints. It was an amazing experience. I was so overwhelmed with emotion from the start of this trip. I think I almost cried when I first walk through Louis Armstrong Airport. And our tailgating was incredible. More boiled crawfish than even I could eat. And king cake, beer, alligator sausage (yes I ate it, very yummy). But it wasn't until I got into the Dome and the game was about to start that I realized exactly where I was and what I was doing. I was about to watch my first Saints game from the Dome since 1991...and they were playing for the NFC Championship and a chance to go to their first Superbowl...and I cried...not just a little but enough that everyone around me, even the grown men, felt the emotion. And they understood. Most had been here all along....most had suffered through Katrina....and when they got home, they cried. And so they knew exactly what I was going through.
The game, itself was so close the entire time. And to go into overtime. I just knew they had to get that ball and they had to make it down field. To stand there, with the same grown men, and watch impatiently as the Minnesota Vikings called a time out to delay the field goal just a little bit longer, was amazing. I had grown up in this city. Who I am is defined by this very place and this very moment. And then the ball just sailed through....I am not sure if I even saw it go through...I just saw the emotion...of the players, of the fans, even my brother cried. And for just a moment, New Orleans was truly the greatest city in the US...although I always knew it.
The themes that the team as always had "Faith." "I believe." They all came to this moment. And what a moment it was. Regardless of what happens in Miami, this city had it's moment in this place that was once a place of horror and destruction. And that's what I'll remember most.
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