Well, that was quite a Super Bowl. In the end, I found myself rooting more for the Colts than the Saints, probably 55/45 or 60/40. Somewhere in that range. I am 100% with Migs on the 19-0 issue, but in the end, I think (although it wasn't really a rational process) I wanted Peyton Manning to win more than I wanted Jim Caldwell to lose. That said, I'm completely happy for the Saints and for their fans to get to have this feeling.
Austen made an interesting point to me in a text, though: this doesn't do anything for the city itself. It doesn't help it rebuild, it doesn't help repair the massive racial and economic inequalities that exist there. If anything, in fact, it might give us the opportunity to paper over those issues. When I (and every other person who writes about this win) write something like "good for New Orleans", I worry that this is just one more unconscious tactic in the battle to forget about the plight of the less fortunate.
It's funny, in the other major sports, the championship teams actually provide a tangible benefit to their city by hosting the big games, resulting in additional revenue for local businesses and so forth. New Orleans, though, doesn't get to host tens of thousands of people traveling to see the game, but they do get to pay for hundreds of hours of police overtime for security for the eventual championship parade.
I don't want to come off completely sour about this, but, related to something I tweeted, I think we ought to take care not to blow this up into some life-changing event for the people of New Orleans.
(That tweet was making a dual reference, by the way; the other point being "let's not start talking about how Peyton Manning has no testicles". But in the interest of keeping a post fairly well confined to just a topic or two, I'll leave the issue of media coverage (creation) of the larger implications of one very close football game for another time.)
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