Eight Feet Deep

Edited ver­sion: I missed an “I.” It’s XLIV instead of XLV. And 44 instead of 45. But what’s a year or two among good Romans? And, if there hap­pens to be any Indi­anapo­lis  fans out there, here is a lit­tle tune to get stuck in your head while the Saints are winning.

This year, unlike many years before, I am pumped up about the Super Bowl.

What is this, the 42nd National Foot­ball League cham­pi­onship, or XLIVif you like the NFL’s Roman numeral ver­sion? I am sure there is some rea­son why the NFL has used Roman numer­als all these years, but I don’t know why and don’t care. I just know that I prob­a­bly haven’t really looked for­ward to watch­ing the Super Bowl — for foot­ball and not the com­mer­cials — since prob­a­bly No. XX. That was when Mike Ditka’s wacky bunch of Chicago bears, includ­ing Jim McMa­hon and William “Refrig­er­a­tor” Perry as well as superb run­ning back Wal­ter “Sweet­ness” Pay­ton played and beat New England.

There is some irony in that par­tic­u­lar game as it relates to XLIV. That game was played in the Louisiana Super­dome, home of NFC champs the Saints. Also, the Bears’ defen­sive coach, who said that the team had wasted its draft pick ear­lier that year on “The Fridge” Perry, was none other than Buddy Ryan, whose son, Rex, was head coach of AFC cham­pi­onship loser New York Jets. Buddy Ryan is a whole ‘nother story in itself. All the ties are like play­ing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only its not.

Won­der if the ref­er­ees stopped at Best Buy in Beau­mont on the way to Miami?

But yeah, I plan to be in front of the TV start­ing about 1 p.m. Sun­day to catch all the hype lead­ing up to the game. That is because of the New Orleans Saints. I sup­pose I have been root­ing for the Saints since they returned to play in the Super­dome after the dev­as­tat­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. I know that isn’t being a fan for very long in their 40-something year his­tory, but after all, they really sucked for so many years.

That sounds rude, I know. But I am not the only one on the Saints’ band­wagon who is rid­ing along and doesn’t, frankly my dear, give a damn what any­one says.

I saw the evac­uees from Kat­rina pour­ing across the Texas line into my area of South­east Texas. Then, they had to evac­u­ate once more as Hur­ri­cane Rita pounded just about the east­ern­most fourth of Texas. Even though I was 80 miles away from the Gulf dur­ing Rita, it was “hur­ri­can­ing” out­side. Then came Hur­ri­cane Hum­berto in 2007, which I slept through. Next was Hur­ri­cane Ike the fol­low­ing year which I watched for most of the night as it whipped through Beaumont.

For­tu­nately, I didn’t suf­fer much from any of those storms except for the lack of elec­tric­ity for a num­ber of days. But my neigh­bors in South­east Texas  and South­west Louisiana did, some greatly. So you might say my cheer­ing on the long-suffering Saints was a mat­ter of “hurricane-related empathy.”

It is going to be a more dif­fi­cult task to root for the Saints too, because they are play­ing the Indi­anapo­lis Colts. I like them as well. Or rather, I like Pey­ton Man­ning, who many think IS the Colts. But I will not have near the dif­fi­culty in loy­alty that Manning’s fam­ily will. Dad Archie, of course, was the Saints quar­ter­back in the bad old days. Thus, Giants quar­ter­back and Peyton’s brother Eli, and non-pro foot­ball brother Cooper, all have ties to the Saints. So did Petyon. Rick Reilly, the ESPN Mag­a­zine scribe who is with­out a doubt one of the best sports­writ­ers around these days, wrote a piece on ESPN.com the other day about the Man­ning family’s dilemma. It sounds damn near excru­ti­at­ing, not only because of their fam­ily ties to New Orleans and the Saints, but because of what it means for the Saints to be play­ing in the Super Bowl after years of fail­ure and then Katrina.

“In sum­mary,” wrote Reilly, “you must either have had your heart removed by corn tongs or be in the Man­ning fam­ily if you’re not pulling for the Saints.”

I couldn’t agree more.