“To be only slightly hyperbolic, the Saints are my life”: Alexander J. Hancock on what the Saints mean to him.

This is another in our continuing series of essays answering the question “What do the New Orleans Saints mean to you?” In it, Alexander J. Hancock of NOLA Eater explains Saints fandom—and New Orleans itself—as an essential part of our cultural identify.

So, I’ll be completely honest. I have no real reason to love the Saints, especially not with the obsessive intensity I feel for them. I live in New Orleans, but I haven’t really lived here for that long. The truth is, I didn’t even grow up a football fan. I’m from Baltimore, born only three years after the Baltimore Colts’ alcoholic owner, Bob Irsay, packed up the team in a bunch of Mayflower moving vans and stole away to Indianapolis in the middle of the night. For a couple of years in the early ’90s, we had the Stallions, a CFL (yes, Canadian Football League) team. They’re now the Montreal Alouettes. And when I was 10, Baltimore did to Cleveland what Indianapolis had previously done to them and stole the Browns. But by that point I was a devoted and obsessive soccer player, and there was little room in my life for football.

But then in 2008 I moved to New Orleans, and the Saints started to mean something to me. For one, I watched more football than I ever had before and learned to love watching games—any game with any team—in bars with friends or at home alone. So I started to understand and appreciate the sport to the point that I think I’m a relatively knowledgeable fan. But that’s not really it. The Saints mean so much more than that to me. To be only slightly hyperbolic, the Saints are my life.

Before you think I’m crazy and recommend that I seek professional help, let me explain. It all comes back to my love for my adopted home. The Saints are an inseparable and essential part of this city that I love. To live in New Orleans—to really live here instead of just existing or working or studying here—is to be a part of New Orleans. So for me, my love of the Saints is not just a result of my (relatively) new-found appreciation for football. It’s essentially tied to my commitment to this city and its people, a city and a people that I will defend to the death. Literally. It’s called love.

You’ll notice I used the word “essentially” there twice. I mean that word it in its truest form. The Saints are part of theessence of New Orleans. Because I used to work in academia, there’s only one way I know how to say this: New Orleans is really fucking interdisciplinary. (Profanity quite necessary there: that’s how intensely I mean it.) Every single element of the larger New Orleans culture is inextricably linked to  all the other parts. And I don’t mean the bullshit Tourism Board kind of culture, with jazzy clarinets, brunch and hanging plants on the balconies of absurdly expensive Quarter condos. I mean the real culture, the authentic one, the one that people actually live.

To illustrate what I mean here, I’m going to go with personal history again. In my day job I write about food, but in writing about food in New Orleans I also write about music and crime and education and Mardi Gras and architecture and, yes, the Saints. That’s something that’s unique to this city, something that doesn’t happen anywhere else. In my hometown of Baltimore, there’s a great local music scene, great food, interesting history and a fun-to-watch football team. (Yeah, I think the Ravens are fun to watch. My sports heaven would be Drew Brees, Marques Colston, Ray Lewis and Ed Reed on the same team. But that’s another story.) But in Baltimore, all those are separate, individual things. Baltimore culture as such doesn’t necessarily mean any of these the way that New Orleans culture means every single one. That’s not a knock on Baltimore, an amazing city that I love dearly and for which there is a huge, The Wire-shaped place in my heart; I think it’s just true. In New Orleans meanwhile, they’re all one and the same. Which is to say that the Saints mean the same thing to me as the pot of red beans I just cooked or the New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings show I saw at the Spotted Cat the other night: they mean the world to me and I can’t imagine my life without them. I’m sure some people, especially those who grew up as fans of some team or another, might find it possible to live in and really, truly love this place without embracing every single element. I just know that I can’t do that.

And now, some people might take all of that to suggest that if you don’t live here or, taking this line of thinking to its most extreme, if you’re not from here, you can’t or shouldn’t root for the Saints. But I think that’s bullshit. The Who Dat Nation is a nation, you dig? It’s more than a fanbase. And while that nation might have its capital in New Orleans, it’s an inclusive nation. Like Statue of Liberty, send-us-your-poor kind of inclusive. Because in the end, New Orleans culture, composed as it is of all those things I said above, is essentially positive. The root of the laissez-les-bons-temps-roulez ethos is the idea that, you know what, fuck it all, let’s have some fun. If you’re down for that, we’re down for that. And we’ll embrace you with arms wide open and we’ll even buy you a drink.

So this, good members of the Who Dat Nation, is what the Saints mean to me. They’re more than a reason to watch football on Sundays. They’re more than some team to root for. It’s a love, an inclusive and positive love inseparable from my love for and my life in my city. Whoever wants to join me in this in New Orleans or elsewhere, I’ll embrace you with arms wide open. I’ll even buy you a drink.