I think that I should have been a football fan all my life. Honestly, I don't know how I got around it. I always got the biggest kick out of seeing people's reactions when I said that my dad played for the 49ers...but never really even watching a football game in it's entirety made me un-interested in what that actually meant to fans of the sport. My knowledge of my dad's football career is spotty...I know that he played for SanFran in the early 70s (before I was born) and that he was set to play for the Saints when he injured his knee and retired from the sport. So I guess it could be that I made a conscious effort to NOT like football because it was something that I should have liked alot. I'm a rebel, what can I say?
All that aside, I happen to have stumbled across being a Saints fan the fairly typical girl way. I married a Who Dat. Now don't get me wrong, living on the Gulf Coast for the last 7 years where the Saints are not a sports team but a RELIGION, I had to succumb to fan-dom. I had watched some games! I had tried, by myself and quite unsuccessfully, to figure out what the hell was going on. I knew that when they scored, it was good. But my interest in football was really pretty limited and simple: I founded an all girls fantasy football league in response to a guy I worked with telling me that girls weren't allowed in his league and those of us that joined the league stayed active in it purely for the smack talking that happened weekly on the message board. We could not have cared less who was winning the games. We really didn't even know who was winning the games. Hell, the girl that won the entire season had never logged in one time.
So, I didn't know anything about football. You don't really have to be a football fan to love the Saints. Because as I have learned this season, the Saints aren't just a football team. They are the story of a city. Cheesy? Yeah. I don't care. What I mean to say is that up until this season, I was a fan of the New Orleans Saints as a theory, an entity within the entity of The Big Easy. I didn't really care if they won or lost, I just wanted them to keep playing!
That being said, I was SO missing out! What was I thinking all these years? Football is the ultimate drama/comedy/love story/reality show all rolled up into one intense time slot! You can't script this stuff! I laugh, I cry, I scream, I cover my eyes! When that kick was good and the Saints won their way to the Super Bowl, I jumped on the bed and got hushed by my loud football loving husband! There's nothing more exciting on television.
I still have alot to learn. I spend a whole lot of time thinking to myself, "Wait, what just happened?" Ken is very patient with me. He explains over and over again the same things and he tries to assure me that everything will be OK. I feel like I need a book. Do they make a Football for Dummies or something like that?
Some may say that this qualifies me as a bandwagon fan, but I don't think so. It just so happens that I realized what I had been missing for so long in a year where they won it big. I secretly think they won it big BECAUSE I started watching, but I don't expect anyone else to believe that (except maybe my friend Carmen who thinks that she causes interceptions with her mind like Firestarter or something). Now that I am in love with the Saints, I can't imagine what my life will be like once the Super Bowl is over. And one more thing...what's so bad about jumping on the bandwagon anyway? It's fun up here! Everyone knows that Saints fans can party like its no one's business. Does it really matter if you just took notice of something once it got big and fancy? I know, I know...the long suffering fans who stuck by thru thick and thin...thru losses and, well, losses...they get dibs when the participant ribbons go out. But seriously, everyone that is a Saints fan either was born into it, married into it, or just stumbled upon it somehow.
So maybe I take back what I said about not wanting to qualify as a bandwagon fan. I am a member of the Who Dat Bandwagon, and I am proud.
