Northeast Ohio's Sports Malady - The New Orleans Saints and Woe is Us
Posted January 16th, 2007 by George Thomas
Another reason I stayed away from this space - I'm on vacation. It's late at night currently and I have no life, this is why I am blogging.
But last night - as a reveled in a stellar hoops display by the Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers - I hung out at my local watering hole. Now as I've mentioned before I rather enjoy having a couple of beers in my off hours. It's a scary proposition that I have many off hours coming up in the next couple of weeks. At any rate, the conversation between the bartender, myself and a few other guys turned to who we wanted to see win the Super Bowl. Having been done in by the curse of Marty Shottenheimer once again (I was pulling for Marty to get his championship), I said that I wanted the New Orleans Saints to win. Right now, I believe the Saints will go all the way. No, this isn't based on any inside knowledge.
But the stars are aligned in a funky way in my estimation. The Saints will be a sentimental choice for a lot of folks and we all know why. The Saints would be like a do-good from God. It's as if that omnipotent being is saying: "Yeah, well, I owe you one for that little storm that leveled the city last year." No, I'm not making light of the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, but it feels as if everything is lining up that way.
That lead one person in the conversation to utter the phrase: "Maybe Ohio could get a tornado so one of our teams can win one." Such is the discontent on the North Coast that we have to wish for agony before enjoying a little ecstasy. Is this what it has come to? Maybe? Or perhaps, just perhaps, our sense of propriety has gone by the wayside in the quest for sports nirvana.
A lot of my friends knew that I was in Phoenix covering the championship game. They also know that I am a Buckeyes fan (primarily because I spent a couple of years in my college career there). I can maintain my objectivity and still be a fan. They all thought that I'd freak out about the fact that the Buckeyes lost. No, I did not. I didn't play the game. And that is one of the reasons I can maintain a level head when writing about the Buckeyes - I remember that it's just a game.
