A Guide to Recognizing Hating Your Saints: The Hater's Guide to the Postseason

If, like myself, you find yourself confronted with an NFL postseason without a rooting interest and unmoved by Don Cheadle soliloquies, you must draw from the well of that most powerful of human emotions. Ok, well, lust probably won't do here. But the second most powerful, hate, will serve as a fine proxy. This is one in a series of posts filled with bile, spleen, vitriol and all-around nastiness toward all the teams involved with the sordid roundelay we know as the NFL Playoffs.

NFC 2nd seed -- New Orleans Saints (10-6)

I already know what you're thinking:

How can you hate on these Saints? Think of all the triumph through adversity: the white Saints fans overcoming the cries of poor people on the way into the stadium, Hollis Thomas overcoming the confines of rules with steriods, Reggie Bush finding a way to live with himself in spite of staggering media inattention.

Well, to that I say: Tragedy + time = humor HATE!!!!!!!!!

Tony Kornheiser told me back in Week 3 that this city was back from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina and I believed it, dammit. If I have a fault, it's that I always believe what Tony Kornheiser tells me. Bald people are sexy! Wilbon is a terrorist! Reggie Bush is a god among lesser gods with marginal marketing potential! Allah doesn't sell jerseys!

If what Tony says is to be believed, there's no reason I have to pull for this team anymore. All is well in the Big Easy. Sean Payton has his Coach of the Year award. Drew Brees got his MVP consideration. Marques Colston made some savvy fantasy football owners happy. The cockles of my heart are so very, very warm. Now the Saints, like the city of New Orleans, should get back to what they do best: fucking up.

We all know what we're gonna see if the Saints continue to advance. Overhead shots of the lower Ninth Ward submerged in water. Ray Nagin making insipid bets against mayors of opposing cities. "Hey, Richard Daly: you put up some deep dish pizza, we'll put up some distended, macerated corpses." Spike Lee docs starting with Reggie Bush scoring that flipping TD against the Steelers (Everybody conveniently forgets that he had a costly fumble later in the game. I mean, c'mon). All that shit is depressing.

No, I kid. New Orleans is a completely sympathetic team, so much so that they make us confront painful truths (we can't look Drew Brees in the birthmark), and that's why they're utterly boring. They're Elway winning his in SB XXXII, Jeebus freak, grocery bagging, elfish woman loving Kurt Warner getting his in SB XXXIV, the improbable Patriots Tuck Ruling it up to capture SB XXXVI and Bettis last year. In other words, the media can't wait to have their bukkake.