Super Bowl Preview

BMOB: As we all know, the Colts are heavily favored to rain all up ons everyone's parade and send the Saints home losers, and there are a number of arguments that support this majority opinion. Peyton Manning is awesome, their defense has found a way to dominate all year without Bob Sanders on the field, they are the hum-drum San Antonio Spurs of football, etc. Well, I hate the personalitiless and boring goody-two-shoes Colts, led by a low-level commercial actor and a rookie coach whose brilliant NBA-inspired style is simply letting his stars do their thing. They had a chance to be the greatest NFL team of all time and threw it away even though they have always been favored and rarely challenged this season. Not to mention, they stole my kicker. Well, I think it's high time they got theirs, and I'll tell you why. Voodoo.

Yeah, that's right. The Saints have the dark art of voodoo on their side, and I would not want to be up against them on Sunday. I mean, you've already got the karma guillotine hanging over the Colts for a) dropping the last two games of the season, b) ditching out on Baltimore 40 years ago and c) playing against Katrina victims as they try to cap the resurrection of an entire region with a dramatic championship. Now, the real question is why would I ever attempt to write such a ridiculous preview. The question I am going to address, however, is why the voodoo powers have lain dormant for so long and why they will choose now to influence the fates of football teams.

We all know that this is the Saints’ first trip to the Super Bowl, which doesn't seem possible for a team with voodoo influences intervening on its behalf. But though there is a small fan base that has never wavered in its loyalty, Saints mania now taps into the very soul of the city, and has taken over every facet of the common consciousness. It takes a lot more than a run-of-the-mill mercenary football team for the dark arts to take notice, but anyone who has been to New Orleans in recent years must acknowledge: There has been an awakening.

For most of the Aints' history, they were simply beyond help. In fact, their one bright spot for the longest time was none other than Archie Manning, who played ok ball at quarterback for the Saints for 11 years. Archie, however, was a Mississippi carpetbagger, who came over from a rival SEC state and never really amounted to a whole lot. His son, Peyton, was born in New Orleans during this period, and would have made a great hometown hero around which the Saints would rally. But it was not meant to be, and on Sunday the local boy will be leading the opposition in the biggest game in Saints history. Not only that, but one of his key receivers, Pierre Garcon, is another cultural turncoat, if only in terms of nomenclature. The clouds gather.

Now, it would seem just as unlikely for a Texas boy like Drew Brees to inspire supernatural allegiance as it was for a Mississippi boy, but Brees was different. He made Louisiana his home, and has worked to make everything around him better, taking on the epic project of rebuilding the region as his personal responsibility after the disastrous consequences of Hurricane Katrina. Since that hurricane and the ensuing efforts by Brees, he has proceeded to have a rejuvenation thought almost impossible in 2005 (one that mirrors the city of New Orleans itself in a way) when the Chargers elected to roll the dice on young Philip Rivers rather than resign him. Brees flourished in an environment of so much emotional turmoil, not to mention decades of losing culture, and was able to put a team and a fan base on his back and carry them steadily in a methodical, four-year campaign to this moment and this game, all the while being a symbol and standard-bearer of hope and faith for an entire culture struggling to return to normalcy as well as completely underestimated by the nation’s pundits, even to this day. Do you really think he did that all on his own?

Thus, the dark arts will intervene, and the Saints will be Super Bowl Champions. Certainly, this moment would have come a bit sooner if the Saints front office hadn't wasted high picks on SoCal pretty boys like Reggie Bush, but now, with a guy named Pierre Thomas in the backfield and the mania in New Orleans at an all-time high, forces are rallying around the Black and Gold, and they will not let them lose. Either that, or I am completely full of shit.