I grew up in a New Orleans Saints household.
At a very young age, I didn’t get it. And neither did my mother or my siblings, but as I got older, and I began to watch the Saints with my dad, it started to click.
By the mid-90s, I had become a fan, and I wanted to see my Saints win the Super Bowl.
My dad would tell me stories about all of the close calls with greatness the New Orleans franchise had had over the decades.
There was the time the Saints went into victory formation, and instead of kneeling, the quarterback tossed the ball backward, and it was recovered by the opposing team and run in for a touchdown.
There were the countless missed field goals and extra points.
And as I grew into my teens, I began to realize that Saints folklore was many times more interesting than the games themselves, especially when Mike Ditka was coaching.
As I watched the team, I began to accumulate my own repertoire of Saints moments.
There was the famous multi-lateral play at the end of 2003 that resulted in a game-tying touchdown for New Orleans, only to be foiled by John Carney’s infamous extra point miss.
And that’s back when they kicked the PAT from the 2-yard line.
That missed PAT put the Saints out of contention that year.
Even last year, there was the touchdown pass in the final seconds during the playoffs against the Vikings that put the Saints out.
The fact that two defenders were on the receiver and neither one touched him was such a Saints thing to happen. And then, of course, there’s 2019.
The missed pass interference call that cost the Saints a trip to the big game.
It cost Drew Brees a second shot at a Super Bowl title. It denied millions of fans like myself the chance to see their team on the big stage for just the second time in our lives.
In the age of change.org, thousands of fans raced to sign the petition demanding the game either be replayed or restarted from the point of the referee’s gross infraction.
Personally, I’m not going to sign it.
For me, this is just another tale that will be told to my kids and grandkids years from now.
There’s no telling where this franchise is going to go when Brees finally decides to hang it up. They could win five Super Bowl championships in a row, or they could retract back into the fateful Saints of old.
If they hit a rough patch, as most franchises do - that are not the Patriots - we’ll need something to talk about during those games.
Either way, the best part about being a Saints fan is being able to tell these stories.
It hurts now, but it will sound a lot better in 30 years than “hey, let me tell you about the time Roger Goodell delayed the Super Bowl so that the Saints and Rams could resume play for a minute and a half.”
Prior to 2004 and 2016, Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs fans were about the same way.
Fans eluded talking about the entire decade of the 1980s to exchange stories about all of the brushes they had with greatness over the years prior.
Steve Bartman was more interesting than all of the 1981-1997 Cubs teams combined.
I don’t remember anything about the 2012 Braves season except the botched infield fly rule call by Sam Holbrooke in the NL Wild Card Game.
There are some who would just as soon see refs and umpires taken out of the equation, in exchange for computers. I don’t think I could watch sports if that were the case.
Umpires and referees make terrible calls sometimes, and those calls can cost a team the chance at a championship.
But game officials are a big part of every sport, and the potential for what we saw on Sunday night is a big part of what makes sports interesting. But lord, it hurts when it doesn’t go our way, doesn’t it?
Taking the officials out of sports is like removing the Electoral College out of the presidential election. It sounds like a dandy idea when your side loses, but once it’s gone, you’ll say, “I immediately regret this decision.”
In the short term, it hurts, but in the long term, it’s a lot more interesting the way it is.
