Gagnant la droite de s'appeler le champion

Monday, February 8, 2010

Watching your team lose can be a bitter pill to swallow. It's not every year your team makes it to the Super Bowl, and of course you want them to win. So when they don't, you just feel, well, blah.

That said, congratulations to the New Orleans Saints. They clearly played the better football in the second half. To paraphrase my high school assisitant principal, "You don't have to have the highest score every quarter, just the fourth quarter." Also, a rare mistake by Peyton Manning sealed the Colts' doom, I'm sure he'll be kicking himself to his dying day. But my hat's off to the Saints. Well done.

Clearly, the Saints deserved to win. And the city of New Orleans deserved a championship, especially after, well, you know.

Um, no.

For reasons I won't go into, there's no love lost between me and New Orleans. While I feel for people as individuals, I don't feel for a city government that is more willing to sweep shit under the rug than face responsibility (and I'm not necessarily talking about Katrina). Still, I've written before on the subject of Katrina, and there's not much more for me to say about it.

However. Too many talking heads in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl talked incessantly about how "New Orleans (the city) deserves to win" in order "to heal" and "return to normalcy." I respectfully disagree. A city does not deserve a championship. A team, if they've worked for it and earned it, absolutely, but not the city itself. If a city wants their team to bring home the championship, then they should support them the best they can. But to say the city deserves it because of past misfortune just disgusts me. So tell me, how does this championship house those still homeless and displaced? Clothe those with nothing left, or feed those still going hungry?

The same crap was shopped regarding the New York Yankees and New England Patriots after 9/11. A tragedy, to be sure, and a win definitely makes you feel good in times of adversity, but to say you deserve it simply because of adversity it is, frankly, offensive.

So to Drew Brees, Sean Payton and the Saints organization: congratulations. You, the team, earned it.