Saints defensive coordinator "Threatening" Manning

[Amy]

Actually, most Saint's fans are scratching their heads at "why are the Saint's the underdog?" You don't hear any "sob story" around here.

All I hear is how the Saints have been "The Aints" for all of history, never gotten this far, the heroes of Katrina, etc etc. I don't hear any sob story about the actual current team - just the franchise in general.

Throw in the "Indianapolis stole the Colts" piece of ancient 'lore, and now you've got the good guys versus the bad guys. The Heroes vs. The Thieves. It's actually quite fascinating to watch the media paint the stories and sell more commercials right in front of our trusting eyes.

[dtel]

It's all about $, look at the players during and after the games , the fans get more upset about a loss than the players, it's just a business with big $ being made.

[dtel's wife]

Dtel and I have a guest coming into town for Super Bowl weekend....he is not departing until Tuesday...so we were trying to find something to do on Monday....seems like all of New Orleans is "closing shop".... Most, if not all of the historic landmarks normally open for tours in New Orleans are closing, The Aubudon Zoo is closed as well as the Aquarium of the Americas. The zoo is closing early Sunday to give everyone time to get home for the game.

It looks like some of the historic plantation homes are also closing!

Even when the Saints were "The Aints" the still sold out some of the games in the Superdome......seems like Saints fans are Saints fans....win or lose.

The Saints returning the Superdome after Katrina was a major milestone for this region. No one expected the Saints playing in the Superdome to be even a remote possibility at that point (a portion of the roof of the Superdome was torn off during Katrina), with evacuees inside that had sought shelter from Katrina. Why should they come back to a region that had been destroyed.....with no field to play on, while other cities were looking to "steal" an NFL franchise?

Is it a sob story....I don't think so....the folks in this area are resilient....we banded together, as families and friends and preservered. The Saints playing in the Superdome that season gave this region hope, that even though Katrina had devastated our homes, ripped families apart and left a lot of us with nothing but the clothes on our backs, some how, some day we would all make it through. Just like the folks from around these parts have been rebuilding since Katrina....so have the Saints.....that's a big deal to us.....

So, yes the Saints were a part of a long list of heroes after Katrina, they gave us hope! If our beloved Saints were back in the Superdome playing surely we would all be okay. Were they the only heroes...no..... others saved lives, still others helped rebuild, others opened their homes, some just held our hands and "listened" while we wrote and posted about the events! All of them and many more are heroes from Katrina...

GEAUX SAINTS1

[Amy]

So, yes the Saints were a part of a long list of heroes after Katrina, they gave us hope!

I hope you know I wasn't disparaging any true heroes from Katrina in my statement, or belittling the disaster in any way. I know your family, and thousands of others, were affected deeply. I was simply referring to the media's play on gaining sympathy and/or emotionat responses in their commentaries.

[]

I hope you can find something for your guests to do! That would be a bummer not to be able to see any of the wonderful sites, not to mention the revenue lost by those businesses being closed all day!

[dtel's wife]

So, yes the Saints were a part of a long list of heroes after Katrina, they gave us hope!

I hope you know I wasn't disparaging any true heroes from Katrina in my statement, or belittling the disaster in any way. I know your family, and thousands of others, were affected deeply. I was simply referring to the media's play on gaining sympathy and/or emotionat responses in their commentaries.

I hope you can find something for your guests to do! That would be a bummer not to be able to see any of the wonderful sites, not to mention the revenue lost by those businesses being closed all day!

Amy,

No I didn't think that Amy. I can see why the "media" being who/what they are would play "it" up in a commentary.

That being said....the Saints were heroes to a lot of us....the Saints taking the field in the Superdome was the first real sign that New Orleans would survive Katrina, a shining light at the end of a dark tunnel for a lot of people down here.....The last thing the people of this region would want is "pity" from anyone....including the media.

GEAUX SAINTS!!!!

[dtel's wife]

I have always been a big fan of Jimmy Buffett.. This is a great story and speaks volumes about Saints' Fans!

Jimmy Buffett bleeds black and gold for the Super Bowl-bound New Orleans Saints

By Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune

February 03, 2010, 4:05AM

Doug Parker / The Times-PicayuneJimmy Buffett salutes Saints fans after singing the National Anthem in the Superdome on Dec. 3, 2006.Margaritaville, it turns out, is a province of the Who Dat Nation.

Among celebrity New Orleans Saints fans, perhaps none bleeds black and gold as profusely, and for as long, as Jimmy Buffett.

In 1967, the then-unknown, 20-year-old singer-songwriter took a break from Bourbon Street to attend the Saints franchise’s first regular season game in Tulane Stadium.

Nearly 43 years later, Buffett, now a multifaceted, multi-millionaire entertainer/ entrepreneur, piloted his own Falcon 900 jet from an island in the South Pacific to New Orleans for the NFC Championship Game.

In between was “43 years of Lent,” Buffett said this week. “But once I went to that first game, they were my team for life.”

His celebrity – and the fact that Saints coach Sean Payton is a fan -- affords Buffett opportunities not available to the average Who Dat. He celebrated the Saints’ Jan. 24 victory over the Vikings in the locker room.

With Sunday’s Super Bowl XLIV set in south Florida, just up U.S. Route 1 from Buffett’s spiritual home in Key West, his Saints fever is spiking.

“People don’t understand what that NFC championship game meant,” he said. “It was an incredible football game, an incredible battle. But it was also a renaissance, a rebirth from horrible years of suffering through being a Saints fan, to surviving a hurricane.”

To Buffett, the win reinforced that “there’s something on the other side.”

Born in Pascagoula, Miss., and raised in Mobile, Ala., Buffett’s Gulf Coast roots run deep. In his youth, he attended Sugar Bowl games at Tulane Stadium.

In 1967, while still a student at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Buffett landed a gig at the now-defunct Bayou Room in the 500 block of Bourbon Street. Players from the new Saints expansion team occasionally showed up.

“I think it was more because we had a hot chick in our band,” Buffett said. “They were more interested in her than in our music.”

Someone gave him tickets to the Sept. 17 regular season opener against the Los Angeles Rams. The Saints’ John Gilliam returned the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown.

“We thought, ‘This is gonna be easy,’” Buffett recalled, laughing. Instead, the Saints lost, and continued to lose. His father cussed the TV during their debacles.

Over the years, as Buffett accumulated such hits as “Margaritaville,” “Come Monday” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise,” founded a restaurant chain and authored best-selling novels, he caught as many games as his schedule allowed. He befriended original Saints owner John Mecom Jr., and is acquainted with current owner/executive vice president Rita Benson LeBlanc.

His buddy Quint Davis, producer/director of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival presented by Shell, describes Buffett as a “deep-tissue” Saints fan.

“No matter where he was in the world, he figured out a way to watch or listen to every game in 2009,” Davis said. “And he called after every game to discuss it in depth and in detail.”

David Grunfeld / The Times-PicayuneJazz Fest producer/director Quint Davis, left, and Jimmy Buffett watch from the sidelines of the Superdome as the Saints play the Forty-Niners in Sept. 2008.Buffett followed the Saints’ Jan. 16 divisional playoff against the Arizona Cardinals via a “funky” internet connection on the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora, where he was shooting a DVD.

Confident the Saints would win, he had pre-planned a trip to the NFC Championship. “It was a very selfish motive, but I was doing what I could to will that victory,” he said. “I was very happy to make my reservations.”

A blown tire on his Falcon jet delayed his departure: “When you have a flat in Bora Bora, you just don’t go buy a can of fix-a-flat.” He arrived in New Orleans 24 hours before the game, after a commute of 5,400 miles.

En route to the Superdome on game day, he and Davis stopped at a Poydras Avenue tailgate party thrown by a coalition of fans called the Down Unda’s.

Some wore sun visors sprouting a shock of spiky hair, a tribute to Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Buffett offered to get up and sing if someone gave him a commemorative visor and a bowl of gumbo.

Deal consummated,

and Frankie Ford’s “Sea Cruise” atop a flatbed truck with local swamp pop band the Creole String Beans. “We faked ‘Margaritaville,’ but it didn’t matter,” Buffett said. “Everybody was having a good time.”

He and Davis proceeded to a suite in the 300 level of the Dome. When Garrett Hartley’s overtime field goal won the game, Buffett wrapped Davis in a tearful embrace.

“It was stunned shock and disbelief, such an emotional thing,” Buffett said. “The game had all the great Shakespearean drama you could want.”

Afterward, he, Davis and country star Kenny Chesney witnessed Sean Payton’s locker-room speech to the team. Payton and Buffett first met during the 2006 season. They bonded after Payton told a story about how, years earlier as a Dallas Cowboys assistant coach, he and some players got a little rowdy at a Buffett concert.

In his post-Vikings speech, Payton referenced the notables in the locker room, including singers who “redefined the music industry, and became great.”

Buffett was “humbled” by the shout out. “That was quite an honor.” But he also found himself sorting through other, more wistful emotions.

“I was thinking of people that I know that aren’t here, who were Saints fans. So I was in the moment, but I was also experiencing déjà vu, and fond and painful memories.

“It was kind of like going to confession. I haven’t been in a long time, so I’m going to count that. I was cleansed.”

Photo courtesy of Quint DavisJimmy Buffett revels in the confetti on the Superdome field after the Saints beat the Vikings on Jan. 24.Long after fans poured from the Dome to celebrate, Buffett laid down in the black and gold confetti blanketing the turf. He tossed it around “like the child of Mardi Gras that I am.”

He then dined on gumbo at Emeril’s, stopped by Payton’s post-game party, and returned to his hotel to watch game highlights, “wrung out.

“There are two Super Bowls. That was the first one,” he said. “Now we’ve got one in Miami.”

To beat the Colts, Buffett believes the Saints must “have one of those games that they’re capable of having. You saw it against New England and the Giants. Those aren’t flukes.

“They talk about ‘distractions’ and ‘first year’ teams. I’d throw that out the window. They’re on a quest.”

What Payton has done in four years in New Orleans “is astonishing,” Buffett said. “A lot of these players come from different areas, and have never experienced anything like New Orleans. When you see a community coming back like it has, it connects to them right away.

“As somebody who grew up around there and keeps an attachment to the swamp, I appreciate that.”

For the 2009 season, the south Florida home of the Miami Dolphins was renamed Land Shark Stadium. Land Shark Lager is among Buffett’s varied “island lifestyle” business interests.

As part of his sponsorship deal, Buffett agreed to develop a Margaritaville-style tailgating area, rewrite his song “Fins” with a Dolphins theme, and perform at the NFL owners’ Super Bowl party in Miami this Saturday.

But in his initial meeting with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, Buffett felt obliged to disclose his “pre-existing Saints condition.”

“I love the Dolphins, but my home team is the Saints,” he said to Ross. “If it ever came down to the Dolphins and Saints playing in the Super Bowl, I would be yelling for the Saints.”

Brett Duke / The Times-PicayuneJimmy Buffett, center, shares a New Orleans Jazz Fest stage with Zachary Richard, left, and Sonny Landreth in 2002.Months later, the Saints are in the Super Bowl. But thanks to a new sponsorship deal with a financial services company, the host stadium is now known as Sun Life Stadium.

“The only thing that would have been better is if we could have kept it as Land Shark Stadium,” Buffett said. “That would have been wonderful. But I’m happy enough.”

Other than performing at the owners’ party, he has no official duties this weekend. Come Sunday, he’ll attend the Super Bowl with Davis and cheer the Black & Gold in a moment he and other hardcore fans have dreamed about for 43 years.

“I’m gonna be a fan and have fun. When you say ‘the Saints are in the Super Bowl,’ you’ve got to go enjoy that.

“I’ll be there with beads on.”

[dtel's wife]

Here's one of my favorites:

[TheEvan]

Love that photo of Jimmy with Richard (pron. "Ree-shard", y'all) and Landreth.

I 'discovered' Landreth a number of years ago by accident. A friend and I went to Mulate's in Breaux Bridge one day after Festival International in Lafayette wrapped. BeauSoleil was appearing, no cover charge (as usual at Mulate's back then). The place was packed and DANCING and a great vibe was on. I kept hearing electric slide guitar coming from the band. This was quite unexpected from BeauSoleil, no? I worked my way to the stage and stood tranfixed while Sonny worked his utterly unique magic with pick and slide. I'd heard of him but had never heard him until that evening. I've been a fan ever since. Not suprising he's gained a measure of fame and success.

[colterphoto1]

Amy come on down, stay here, It's not Miami but you won't be able to tell in the Quarter , we are going to NO to hear some music Fri (jazz) at Preservation Hall in the Quarter and Sat night at Rock & Bowl and probably back to the Quarter. Not sure about Monday but Tuesday is the Saints parade win or lose it don't matter really still a party.

http://www.preservationhall.com/hall/index.aspx

http://www.rockandbowl.com/CalandarPAGE/mounths/february.html

The invitation is open to anyone interested, especially my favorite buddy Amy!

The Evan, if you want to meet us at Rock and Bowl, let us know.....dtel's cousin is singing with The Wise Guys, the band playing at Rock N Bowl Saturday night.

Like the article said....it's not just about drinking....it's about having a good time....PERIOD....even if New Orleans loses....there will still be a parade.......it's all good!

Geaux Saints!

sounds like my kinda place! we'll have to go next time I come down to N.O.!

[just_like_dtel]

ENUF SAID! GEAUX SAINTS!!!!!!