So we just won the Super Bowl. The city is pretty much at a standstill as people celebrate. The Saints are on top of the NFL…and we’re still not the favorites to win next year’s Super Bowl. So I say, “Screw you, Vegas oddsmakers.” (The Colts are 6-1, the Saints and Chargers are 8-1). And I say screw you to all those commentators who talked about how Peyton Manning lost the game with his interception, which Tracy Porter returned for a game-sealing touchdown. The pundits treated a 13-3 team like miserable underdogs. Then we won. And they still think we’re not as good—consider The Onion’s take on things: New Orleans moves to No. 3 in NFL power rankings. Too bad—we have this:
and nobody else does. You can respect us or not. It really doesn’t matter to me. Quarterbacks like Mark Sanchez, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning got more commercial airtime than Drew Brees during the Super Bowl, but those three didn’t get to lift the MVP trophy and film the “I’m going to Disney World!” commercial. People are acting like Drew Brees is just now a member of the NFL’s elite QBs, when anyone with a brain would have seen the numbers Brees has been putting up ever since he arrived in New Orleans and realized just how phenomenal a player he is. Clearly he was already among the elite, and you moronic pundits are just late to the party.
You can say we got lucky with turnovers—but we had a defense that prided itself on making the big plays, knowing that they had an offense ready to match and surpass anything opponents could do. And no team wins a Super Bowl or even sniffs the playoffs without luck. So yeah, we were lucky—and we were better than everyone else. You simply can’t tell me that the Colts are a better team. These teams were very even, and the Saints just flat-out played better. The media loves to obsess over Peyton—they had to obsess over someone once we knocked golden boy Brett Favre out of the playoffs. I like Peyton a lot, but this Super Bowl wasn’t about his mistake, or his choking—it was about superb scouting and planning by the Saints defense, and a great jump by Tracy Porter as he faced one of the Colts’ bread-and-butter plays.
So, as I head off to the Lombardi Gras parade, I have just two closing words:
WHO DAT?
Boise State fans have been facing this for years. We won a BCS game, went undefeated and are losing exactly one starter for next year, we have everybody else back, and we’re still getting no respect.
I feel your pain. Screw em, enjoy the championship
Yes, but at least the Saints’ ability to win a championship is not affected by people’s disrespect toward them. I had been a bowl-system proponent for a long time, and while I’m still not crazy about the idea of a playoff, Boise State’s inability to get the respect they deserve has been a major factor in swaying me to the playoff side. The final straw was when they pointed out how difficult it is for them to get games against BCS opponents. The BCS guys have nothing to gain: if they win, they were supposed to, and if they lose, it legitimizes Boise State (and by extension, the other non-BCS powers). I’d like to see as small a playoff as possible (4 to 8 teams), but I’ve finally come around that a slight watering-down of the regular season is preferable to the continued screwing-over of Boise State, TCU, etc.