A Super Bowl Smile

When Drew Brees took a knee and Super Bowl XLIV was put to rest, I found myself with a smile across my face. I was genuinely happy for the Saints. This was a new feeling following the NFL’s final game.

The past bunch of Super Bowls have featured some classics and some clunkers but a lot of games that left me feeling cold afterward. The NFL is certainly not the free-for-all spending spree of disproportionate levels that MLB is, however, a clear pattern of haves and have-nots is evident. Look at the past Super Bowl winners:

Super Bowl XLIII- Steelers
XLII- Giants
XLI- Colts
XL- Steelers
XXXIX- Patriots
XXXVIII- Patriots

Sure, some new teams have gotten there but the last new kid to actually win the Big Game was Tampa Bay in Super Bowl XXXVII…and that team wasn’t all too captivating. I mean Dexter Jackson was MVP of the game.

The haves have ruled the roost year after year through my teen years. The Steelers have won so many that seeing them win another didn’t do anything for me. As much as I did not want the Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII, seeing the Giants pull the upset did not leave a warm feeling in my tummy. The Colts beat the Bears and Peyton Manning got his first Super Bowl but the Colts were anything but a real underdog story. And seeing Belichick, Brady and the Patriots win any game, let alone the Big Game, makes me unhappy.

Well tonight, the underdog won; the underdog team, underdog city. A lot of times the media needlessly overhypes teams or stories. But the significance of Hurricane Katrina and the role of this Saints team in New Orleans is one that I think deserves the attention. Just five years ago, New Orleans was decimated. The Saints’ home for football, the Superdome, was a shelter, the pictures from which were hard to watch. The city is still not altogether.

But this Saints team and that city have an indelible connection unlike many others I have seen in sports. The Saints are New Orleans. It doesn’t have baseball or hockey. It just recently got basketball back. Football has been the only mainstay sport in the city.

And while I was watching the trophy presentation, I realized why I had that big smile on my face and some goosebumps on my arms. I was getting a taste of the closest thing I had ever felt to a Jets’ Super Bowl win in my lifetime. The Saints are most certainly not my team. I have no real connection to them. But I could feel the joy of seeing a 40+ year Super Bowl drought ending. In seeing the Saints defy that streak that the Jets still continue, I got a small taste of what a Jets Super Bowl win might feel like…and it was great.

Tonight, the natural order of progression was altered. The haves did not win. The new kid, the underdog prevailed. It wasn’t my team but when I flicked off CBS tonight I wasn’t annoyed, frustrated or just appreciative of a good game; I actually finished an NFL season with a genuine smile on my face.