Editorial: After 42 years, Saints go marching on

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Officially, there were 71,276 people in the Superdome. Most of them were rooting for the home team, and that number will grow in the years to come as the far-flung members of the New Orleans diaspora come to believe that they, too, were there the magical Sunday their Saints ended 42 years of football futility.

Come August, New Orleans will mark -- "celebrate" is most assuredly not the word -- the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its dark aftermath when it looked as if the Saints would have to move elsewhere, the Superdome razed and large swaths of the city effectively abandoned.

In overtime, an untested young place-kicker who had started the season on suspension for taking a banned stimulant lined up 40 yards from the goal post and quickly and cleanly punctuated another long step in the city's recovery. The Saints were the National Football Conference champions and on their way to the Super Bowl.

It was fitting that the close-run victory took place in the Superdome, whose battered and punctuated hulk was the only shelter for 30,000 people in the days following Katrina. They sweltered without water, food and sanitation while their government sat paralyzed. It was a low point in our history, but the fact that a happy crowd could return to watch the Saints was a testament to resiliency -- and the hold football has on the American psyche.

Saints football can sometimes be as gothic as a Southern novel. The Minnesota Vikings quarterback they faced, the legendary Brett Favre, an inspiration to 40-year-olds everywhere, is a Cajun who grew up a Saints fan in neighboring Mississippi. Archie Manning, the father of the Indianapolis Colts quarterback they will face, was the Saints quarterback for 10 years, when you would not have heard "Saints" and "Super Bowl" in the same sentence.

But you will now: The Saints are going to the Super Bowl.

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)