I know sports isn't often discussed on DKos, but perhaps this should be one of those times.
It may be true that Americans spend too much time talking about sports and too little talking about more pressing matters, but it is undeniable that sports can provide a much-needed boost when times are tough. H.G. Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights" describes how the otherwise-dreary city of Odessa, Texas comes alive for high school football. And who can forget the lift the U.S. Olympic hockey team gave Americans during the winter of 1980?
It is in this spirit that I point out that both the New Orleans Saints and the LSU Tigers won their opening games this weekend. The Saints upset the Carolina Panthers, 23-20, on a late field goal, and the Tigers edged Arizona State, 35-31, in a "home" game played on the Sun Devils' field in Tempe.
The Saints are intriguing, in part, because of the franchise's history of ineptitude. Winning seasons have been relatively infrequent, and (if memory serves) the team has never won a playoff game. Indeed, the team's futility has become one of its trademarks. The 1980 "Ain'ts" had their fans wearing bags over their heads until the team posted its first and only win in the next-to-last week of the season. A few years earlier, the team's canine mascot made a habit of defecating on the field during each game. [I'm not making this up. See "The Football Hall of Shame," pp. 136-137.] In short, the Saints make the Chicago Cubs look like a dynasty.
With this in mind, consider the following excerpts from MSNBC...
CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Football is no longer a simple game for the New Orleans Saints. They'll play this season for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, a burden they'll carry every time they step on the field.
The Saints won Sunday for their deluged city and the displaced victims of the Gulf Coast region, getting two touchdowns from Deuce McAllister and a 47-yard field goal from John Carney with 3 seconds left in a 23-20 season-opening win over the Carolina Panthers.
"In the back of our minds, we know we have to give them one tiny bit of hope," said New Orleans quarterback Aaron Brooks. "We have complete faith in what we are doing because every time we go out there, it is our job to give them hope that every day will be a better day."
The Saints have visited shelters in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, spending time with fans who had lost everything. Each time they heard the same request: Win a game for us.
If they needed another reminder, they got it during a Saturday night team meeting when coach Jim Haslett read an emotional letter from New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin.
"He talked about the things he had seen, babies dying," receiver Joe Horn said. "You would only see it in a horror story. People were crying on his shoulder, saying they don't know where their son is, where the daughter is.
"I can't speak enough about how our heart goes out to them. The letter had an impact. We respect and acknowledge what everyone has gone through."
Like many residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, many of the Saints players' and coaches' homes have been destroyed or heavily damaged by the storm. Indeed, the team itself is homeless, as the Superdome is uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. As it stands now, the Saints will play four "home" games in San Antonio, three at LSU's stadium in Baton Rouge, and one at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. That's a long way from the bayou.
A year ago, at the Athens Olympics, the Iraqi soccer team momentarily united that battered and violent country, giving everyone, Sunni, Shiite and Kurd alike, a reason to feel part of the same cause, a reason to feel good about themselves.
The Saints are like that soccer team, a group of players about whom everyone in the nation can feel good, a team that everyone can cheer for, a team whose adventures will be recounted beyond the borders of their home city, state and even country.
Sure, even a playoff appearance by the Saints won't mean much in the grand scheme of things. But just for a moment, the people of Louisiana can cheer, and that has to count for something.
I grew up in the rust-belt environs of Huntington, West Virginia and the surrounding tri-state (WV-KY-OH) area. The region's economy has been battered for the past three decades, as the steel, glass, and chemical industries that had sustained the area for over a century declined. The city of Huntington itself has lost over a third of its population, dropping from 80,000 half a century ago to about 50,000 now. But despite it all, the people had one thing to rally around: the Thundering Herd football team of Marshall University. Most football fans know Marshall as a program that dominated Division I-AA before making a successful transition to Division I-A ball. Certainly, there are plenty of younger Herd fans that have known little except success. But the history of the program is far different. Not only was the Marshall program inept on the field for most of its history - there have been streaks of twenty consecutive losing seasons and twenty-seven straignt non-winning games (there was one tie in that span) - but the team itself was wiped out in a 1970 plane crash. More than once, there was talk of discontinuing the program. The locals wouldn't hear of it, and the program was spared each time.
For the record, Marshall was scheduled to play Tulane at the Superdome on October 29, and I have no idea when, where, or if that game will be played. Tulane University is closed for the semester, its students relocated to other schools. In the grand scheme of things, it matters little if a football game is played. But to the people of New Orleans and the fans of the Green Wave, it will represent one precious step toward normalcy, toward a time when people can journey to the stadium or gather around the TV and cheer on the home team. May that day come quickly for the people of the Gulf Coast.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9272428/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9230168/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9301269/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9303374/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9302480/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9287871/