The Resurrection of New Orleans

New Orleans Saints 31, Indianapolis Colts 17. Wait...what?!

Saints 31, Colts 17....

The New Orleans Saints, a team that has had over 40 years of overwhelming futility defeated the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday night to win their first Super Bowl title. Feb. 7, 2010 was the date. Super Bowl XLIV was the occasion. And boy, did the Saints rise to the occasion.

For a city that was 85-percent underwater in 2005, this was the night that told everybody “New Orleans is back.”

Even prior to the Saints' improbable win over a team that could and should have gone undefeated, even before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was not the friendliest of confines. For a city rich of history, it certainly had a past of being crime-ridden and abundant of poverty in some areas. Katrina magnified those problems and for a time turned New Orleans into an American owned third world country.

It was even more disheartening to watch the city's residents be displaced and called “refugees” by certain members of the media. Refugees? These were American citizens just like us.

Rapper and New Orleans native Lil Wayne was recently quoted (I'm paraphrasing here) saying that the United States has done so much for Haiti and that it is a phenomenal cause, but did not do nearly as much for his hometown.

That's certainly a fair assessment. If you don't believe me, watch Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. I could go on and on about FEMA's inadequacies, but then this would turn into a political column and we wouldn't what that now, right?

My point is the city of New Orleans has gone through hell and back before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. To see the underdog and beloved Saints defeat Peyton Manning at arguably his most intense and “holy hell this guy has a killer instinct like Jordan, Magic, Bird, Montana” stage and his Colts is nothing short of remarkable.