SuperBowl 2010: Saints vs. Colts (Which Means Saints If You Don’t Hate America)

First things first: Tonight we’re all watching Super Bowl XLIV — New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts — Sunday, February 7, 2010, kicking off at 6:25pm ET on CBS. You can watch online via a few sites like Hulu.com, Justin.tv, Ustream.com or subscription-required Super Bowl 44 SOPCAST channel. You’re welcome. And yes, everyone loves Peyton Manning, the Colts’ QB who has a shot of real greatness tonight, he shouldn’t be offended — or surprised! — to know that pretty much everyone outside Indianapolis is rooting for the Saints.

“Bourbon Street has come to the Superbowl!” thundered a booming voice on CBS just now, whipping up the pre-game excitement. That’s a big deal. We can all remember when Bourbon Street wasn’t going anywhere, because it was covered in water. New Orleans wasn’t the only city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina — there was Gulfport, Waveland, Biloxi — but it came to represent the awful destruction of Hurricane Katrina and how it brought an entire swath of the country so very low. Tonight, with the Saints representing in the Superbowl, it has come to represent a return from that awful time, a re-emergence and a renewal.

Never mind that Peyton Manning’s father, Archie Manning, was the longtime Saints quarterback, anchoring the team for a full ten years, sans Super Bowl. But though Manning pere says he’s not torn about who to root for, the rest of the country doesn’t have relatives on that field. On the contrary, Archie Manning’s longtime, Super Bowl-less tenure with the Saints just seems to make it all the more poetic if they do win. What is football, after all, without poetry?

So — if you’re a Colts fan and you don’t live in Indianapolis, ask yourself: Why do you hate America? Just kidding. But it must suck to be a Colts fan today. It’s almost not a fair fight, because all the fairweather fans are joining in on the other side. “I am not a partisan for the game itself — I’m a Patriots fan!” said MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “But I’m psyched, you’re psyched and kind of the whole country is psyched for how psyched New Orleans is for its Saints.” CNN’s Howie Kurtz played that clip on “Reliable Sources” this morning and speculated that the press was “in the tank” for the Saints. Well, they’re not in the tank as in covering Peyton Manning like Hillary Clinton circa March 2008, but there’s no question that there’s a poignant national story at play here.

There’s another story too, of course — steely-faced Peyton Manning, with his blonde hair, sunswept face and clear green-gray eyes, who does such a good job dancing in that Sony Vaio commercial, is up for his second Super Bowl ring and a shot at being named one of the all-time greats. That would be nice for the Colts. But still — on one side you’ve got this All-American icon and his All-American story, and on the other side, you’ve got a team that represents an entire region ravaged by an All-American tragedy, one that we all watched in horror en masse around the television, not unlike how we’re all watching the Superbowl today. There’s a wee bit of difference there.

Well — it’s almost kickoff time, and whoever may be in the tank for whom, it’s all going to come down to what happens on that football field in Miami. So — good luck to both sides, and may the best team win. But I hope it’s the Saints.

Related:
Nightmare in New Orleans [MSNBC, Aug. 30, 2005]

Also Related:
Archie Manning’s son, Peyton, faces father’s longtime New Orleans Saints [Seattle Times]

Photo via Times Online. This post has been edited with an additional paragraph mentioning Archie Manning’s history with the Saints.