• Rapides Brings Home The State Title

Super Bowl Champion Saints
02/08/10 - 10:40 AM
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By BRETT MARTEL
AP Sports Writer
    FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) - Drew Brees turned to his wife when
he woke up and asked: “Did yesterday really happen?”
    The Saints and their fans awoke Monday to the realization that
the once lovable losers from New Orleans were Super Bowl champions
for the first time in the club’s 43-year history after Sunday’s
31-17 triumph over the Indianapolis Colts.
    “I’m not sure if it’s completely sunk in yet,” Brees said at
Monday morning’s news conference at the convention center in Fort
Lauderdale. “It seems like as the minutes go by, it slowly does.
    “Our victory last night was the culmination of four years of
hard work, fighting through a lot of adversity, ups and downs and
more importantly than that, representing a city that has been
through so much,” Brees said.
    “Along the way, people have asked me so many times, ‘Do you
look at it as a burden or extra pressure? Do you feel like you’re
carrying the weight of the city on your teams’ shoulders.’ I said,
‘No, not at all. We look at it as a responsibility. Our city, our
fans, gave us strength and we owe this to them. That’s made all the
difference. ... There’s no people that you would want to win for
more than the city of New Orleans. So it’s an honor.”
    As Brees spoke, coach Sean Payton sat off to the side, elbows on
knees, face buried in his hands. When it was his turn to speak, he
leaned on the podium, clutching the Vince Lombardi trophy in his
right hand. He recounted Lombardi’s grandson, Saints assistant Joe
Lombardi, posing for a photo with the sterling silver hardware
awarded each year to the Super Bowl winner.
    “Joe Lombardi, his father, Vince Jr., and his two brothers sat
and posed with this trophy, the four of them, while pictures were
taken. And I just thought to myself, ‘You’ve got to be kidding
me,”’ Payton said. “If you believe in heaven, and you believe
Vince Lombardi is there looking down on his grandson, it doesn’t
get any better. This is a guy that coaches our quarterbacks,
coaches Drew Brees and here a trophy that’s named after his
grandfather.”
    Payton then smiled and added that he had the trophy in bed with
him while he slept early Monday morning.
    “You can’t get enough of this,” Payton said. “Rolled over it
a couple times. I probably drooled on it. But man, there’s nothing
like it.”
    Payton said when all was quiet in the team hotel around 3 a.m.,
he offered a prayer of thanks for his team and his experience in
New Orleans, where he became a head coach for the first time in
2006, with the city still largely in ruin only months after
Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005.
    “When (Saints general manager) Mickey Loomis hired me in 2006,
not having been from New Orleans, it would be hard to describe the
relationship between the fans and the players there, and it became
apparent to me that football was obviously very important but it
was much bigger than football,” Payton said. “When we got into
coaching or playing, we got into it for certain reasons and yet the
reasons in New Orleans far exceeded what we ever expected.”
    The theme for the Saints in 2009 became: A season of firsts.
They opened with their first 13-game winning streak, which earned
them a first No. 1 seeding in the NFC playoffs. That led to a first
home NFC title game, then a first Super Bowl, and now New Orleans’
first major professional sports championship.
    Before this season, the Saints had only eight winning campaigns
- and two playoff victories - in their previous 42 years combined.
The Saints had to win three postseason games over three great
quarterbacks - Kurt Warner, Brett Favre and Peyton Manning - to win
the title this season.
    Their run to the Super Bowl captured the attention of football
fans everywhere. The Nielsen Co. says the game got its highest
overnight ratings in 23 years, meaning there’s a strong likelihood
it will be the most-watched Super Bowl when the final numbers are
released later Monday.
    Commissioner Roger Goodell called this Super Bowl “clearly more
than a game.
    “I keep thinking of the word ‘magical,”’ he said. “When you
think about the relationship between the Saints and the Gulf Coast
and the city of New Orleans, it was more than just a football game
and more than just a football team. The hopes, the dreams and the
struggles of that community were all reflected in that football
team. It was a great night for the people in New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast region.”
    Payton said he celebrated until about 3 a.m., and then when all
was quiet in the team’s downtown Miami hotel he finally put the
trophy down for a moment and said a prayer of thanks “for these
special times that don’t come around too often. For that I’m very
appreciative and very humbled.”
    Brees talked of his delight of the thought of fans celebrating
in New Orleans and added that he didn’t expect many of them to be
at work this morning.