Geaux Saints!

Because I live so close to Louisiana (my house is only 5 minutes from the state line and only 5 hours by car to New Orleans), there's a LOT of Cajun influence here, from the food (can you say gumbo and crawfish etouffe, ya'll?) to the multiple Mardi Gras celebrations to the language spoken. The Cajun culture is so pervasive that I almost feel like I live in LA rather than in TX.

After last night, nothing will ever be the same again as when the New Orleans Saints came marching in to Miami and took home the Super Bowl ring in their inaugural Super Bowl appearance.  I used to be a BIG pro football fan but fell off the wagon when Jerry Jones fired Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry in 1983 and I vowed never to watch pro football again. I managed to keep my vow until 2008 when Eric asked me to watch pro football games with him.  He's a big fan of the Houston Texans, and has his own Owen Wilson jersey. I don't really follow any team nor consider myself a fan of any team these days.

Eric was rooting for "Sheriff" Manning and the Colts, whom I still managed to call the "Baltimore Colts" despite the franchise having moved to Indianapolis many years ago.  Guess that's what happens when you ignore something for 20 plus years..LOL..kind of like the 1999 Brendon Frasier/Alicia Silverstone movie, "Blast from the Past."  I haven't been in an atomic bomb shelter for 35 years, but my self-imposed pro football exile means I'm still out-of-touch with how today's pro football games are played..<g>  I pepper Eric endlessly with questions like, "They can do that now??"

When the 2nd half of the Super Bowl started, my intuition told me that the Saints were going to take this game, even though the score (and the odds) were against them.  The Saints players seemed to have found a great hunger to win that was missing in the first half.  And, what better way than a Super Bowl win to say that New Orleans was back after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005? And win they did.

Eric didn't watch the last 2 minutes of the game, but I couldn't resist, remembering how the Giants pulled out in front of the Pats in the last few minutes of the 2008 game to win the Super Bowl that year. (Now, that was a great nail-biting game!)  When the Sheriff was unable to convert anything in the last few minutes of the game and it ended, I told Eric that I thought New Orleans won because they wanted it more.  This game goes to show how far desire and passion will take you, even when the world believes you'll never pull it off.  You've just got to want it badly enough and not let anything get in your way of your goal..;)