2010 January

Photo Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images

The New Orleans Saints have done us proud! So proud. They have won the NFC Championship and are going to their first Super Bowl.

And it feels like Destiny.

I’m a huge sports fan. I believe there are many lessons we can learn from sports. Some of the greatest stories ever told are played out on the gridiron or the hardwood. These Saints may become one of them.

Photo by Chris Graythen/Getty Images

But the Saints’ story is an odyssey. A tediously long journey. Just to get to the Super Bowl.

I was born and raised in Louisiana. The Saints were our team. In Shreveport, La. the local networks usually chose to play the Dallas Cowboys game rather than the Saints. This left my child-like mind confused about loyalty. “Hmm. We’re from Louisiana, like the Saints are. The local TV likes the Cowboys. Why are we supposed to care about the Cowboys, again?”

So I found another team to root for. Have you ever seen Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait?

Well I did. And I fell in love. With the (at the time) Los Angeles Rams, the team the movie is about. The Cinderella story of Kurt Warner taking the Rams to a Super Bowl is a great story, but I’ll save that for another blog post.

After growing up in Louisiana, I lived in various places and pulled for other teams sometimes. We settled in Alabama along the Gulf Coast. Still- the Saints are our team. The past few years the Saints have had some good years where we thought, “maybe this is it, maybe this is the Saints’ year…” But it wasn’t. Not yet.

Fast Forward to the 2010 NFC Championship.

Now I’m the kind of girl who jumps up and down and screams after a HUGE play. Can’t help myself. It’s who I am, more passionate than obnoxious I like to think. Unable to contain my joy, my excitement.

So last night, after the Saints kicker, kicked the winning field goal in overtime

to send the Saints, the very Saints who have never been, to a Super Bowl, my oldest child looked over in confusion.

Why was her mother not jumping up and down? Why was she not screaming and running around like a crazy person? Why had she not yet woken up the one child who dared to prance around the house all day claiming to be for the Vikings to taunt him in victory? “Mom?” she asked, “You want me to go get Dad? Maybe he hasn’t seen it?”

“No, honey,” I said, tears silently leaking down my cheeks, reaching for her hands. “Let me tell you about when Saints fans used to go to games with paper bags on their heads because they were so embarrassed of the team…” I pulled her close and told her the stories of the Saints over the years.

…Of the years they were called “the Aints”…