Just a chance

Now this one will be hard to understand unless you're a fan.

A fan is someone who has devoted, without devotion, time with a sports team or actor or musician with the expressed purpose of seeing that person or team win. A fan is not someone who simply roots for a team, acor or musician. I don't believe in fans of mediocrity. The notion that someone can root for someone no matter what is only based on the fact that no matter what can change.

Hence, who-datdum.

I explained this to a writer yesterday. I sat in my living room with my dad, something we could absolutely agree upon in its rarity, and watched John Gilliam return the opening kickoff in Saints history for a touchdown. We rose from our chairs. This whole Saints thing was going to be easy. It hasn't been. From then till now, 42 years later, has been one disappointment after another. Till now the grandest thing of all has been coming home to the Super Dome in 2006 and making the NFC championship game that year. All the others, pffft.

Now?

Now we have a chance.

See, I think all most folks, those of us not born to silver spoons and the lap of luxury, want is a chance. I think that even with Christ, what we most desperately want is another chance after we've flittered away the one we had.

We want a chance to make it, to have a family, to raise a healthy, productive, family, to have a job that gets us by. And when we make a mistake, as we surely will, to have a chance to correct it.

That's what this unbeaten thing is about. A chance. It might end tonight. It might end on Feb. 7, but in the end, we, all of us who-dats (and aren't there more running around than every before? That's okay, we welcome you) had a chance.

A chance to be part of the discussion as the season wound down;
A chance to see what it's like to be in talks for all the major awards;
A chance to have pro-bowlers on 'our' team;
A chance to see the city talked about in glowing terms instead of almost saddened ones;
A chance to be a winner, finalllllllllyyyyy.

As this season goes along, obviously none of us know the outcome. Never having been an LSU fan, I can't possibly know what it is like to win the big one except for that glorious year in 1995 when the Braves finally did it.

But this I know: we have a chance.

Makes me feel like I'm included.

In the words of New Orleans, Who-dat say ...
oh, you know the rest.