Off-topic Video: Bourbon Street explodes

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Mon Jan 25 12:59pm EST

Off-topic Video: Bourbon Street explodes

I don't make many personal notes here, especially on topics unrelated to college football. But this morning requires a moment of sincere congratulations to the New Orleans Saints, the only professional team I've ever cared about in any significant fashion, for dramatically fulfilling the lifelong dreams of tens of thousands of people (including your humble blogger) who weren't sure they'd ever live to see the 'Aints in the friggin' Super Bowl. The national media's focus on New Orleans is understandably Katrina-centric, and the feel-good vibes in their narratives inevitably come in the context of a city still reeling from the worst natural disaster in American history. Fine.

But Saints fans felt like a cursed, beleaguered group of downtrodden misfits long, long before 2005, and when they staggered into Bourbon Street after Garrett Hartley's game-winning field goal in overtime Sunday night, it wasn't to celebrate a respite from four and a half years of misery. It was to celebrate the cure of a four-and-a-half-decade disease:

I was in that number (not on camera, thankfully), and I am alive -- albeit down one trusty black fleur de lis cap. I will certainly not be replacing it with anything that says "NFC Champion." If this is the team Saints fans been waiting for, it will finish the job against native son Peyton Manning and the Colts in two weeks. Nothing else will appear here about that match-up in the meantime, unless it explicitly relates to the college game. But I will never be too objective to say: Go Saints. And thank you, finally.