NEW ORLEANS — You do you is the more modern phrase of the old adage to be yourself.
On Super Bowl Sunday, New Orleans is going to do New Orleans like only New Orleans can.
Still boiling mad from the non-call of pass interference and helmet-to-helmet contact that deprived the beloved Saints of a second trip to the Super Bowl (a blown call that is not in dispute by anyone, even the player who committed it and the league’s commissioner) the city and its denizens hadn’t spent more than a few miserable hours before deciding to handle things in a very New Orleans way.
This Sunday, perhaps more than any day with the exception of the one that ended with the Saints' win in the 2010 Super Bowl, residents are expected to don black and gold garb and have a good time celebrating the team they love and trying to emotionally prop up the team and themselves from a wrong they feel was the worst in NFL history.
Much as the Whos in Whoville celebrated Christmas without presents, New Orleans will celebrate Super Bowl Sunday without a game. You can’t keep this town from loving its football team, even if you took away its chance to physically be in Atlanta, participating in the sport’s ultimate event.
No, New Orleans will dance, they’ll second line, they’ll eat and they’ll party through a series of loosely-organized events. They’ll find creative ways to poke fun at the NFL, Commissioner Roger Goodell and the offending referees. Like the soon-to-be-in-full-swing season of Carnival, there will be a mixture of good times, wholesome fun, satirical wit and things that most cultures would try to prevent their children from seeing.
The rest of the modern world, those who’ve told us to ‘get over it,’ and those who agreed that we were robbed and have then spent so much time telling us all of the reasons we should have won the game anyway, will look at us oddly. What are they doing?
Those who’ve either spent their whole lives in this city and its surrounding areas or who have adopted our ways will know. We’ll be showing the world that they can’t cancel our celebration just because they’ve taken our toys. We’re going to have fun anyway. We’re going to show our team, our coach and each other that we love their effort. We love the fact that they play the game representing our city, with all of its fabulous virtues and flaws of excess.
No, the NFL grinches can’t keep this party from coming. We planned on having fun on Super Bowl Sunday, and we will. Perhaps we will sneak a peak at the game, because, let’s face it, for the second time in three years, most of us will be Patriots’ fans.
But mostly, New Orleans will do New Orleans, and no one can stop us.