Professional football players make too much money. If it was up to me, they’d make a normal salary of say, 40 or 50 grand with perhaps some extra health benefits to offset the fact that they get the crap beat out of them every week.

Except for the Saints. Every member the New Orleans Saints should be made into Royal Napoleonic Dukes, given plots of land on the river and offered muffalettas from the Central Grocery every day for lunch. Their names should be carved into the sidewalk outside Jackson Square, and the Abita Brewing Company should name a new beer after each one of them. I’ll be the official taster.

As you may remember from the June 8, 2009 Prom in New Orleans story, I grew up in New Orleans, and like anyone else from there, a part of my heart remains stuck in the storied oaks of St. Charles Avenue, the muddy swirl of the Mississippi, the crazy rhythmic sway of life in the home of drive-thru daiquiris, jambalaya and coffee with chicory.

And home to the Superdome, of course, the very spot where four and a half years ago, thousands of people cowered in darkness while Hurricane Katrina changed the city forever.

Life in New Orleans hasn’t been all that pleasant since then. My parents live there, and I visit often, though not as often as I’d like. People always ask me if my parents fared okay after Katrina, and I always feel a pang. The short answer is yes, they’re okay; their house did not flood, and while it sustained severe damage, it has been repaired.

The real answer is more complicated, because the truth is that no one fared okay after Katrina: even those who’ve been fortunate enough to rebuild and go on with their lives still suffer from an intangible malaise that’s difficult to explain. Parts of the city have come back; parts have been lost forever. A sadness remains – a layer of mourning that will serve as the foundation for the city’s future.

And here comes its future, in the form of passing, rushing, crushing men wearing Fleur-de-Lis on their helmets. For New Orleanians, they aren’t just a team, but rather the emphatic, defiant exclamation point that comes at the end of a really crappy history chapter. The Saints are lifting up a state sunk lower than the swamps on which it was built. And When the Saints Go Marching Into the Superbowl, they will have the power of hope behind them – not just the hope for a silly football game win, but the hope that, as we used to say in our high school volleyball huddles, the will to win cannot be beat. If the city can unite behind these Saints, perhaps it can also unite to rediscover itself in the ruins of the storm.

My Great Aunt Eva was a huge New Orleans Saints fan, and she hardly ever missed a home game. She even remained loyal when the Saints were the Aints because they were setting a losing record, and fans wore paper bags over their heads. When she died, the Saints lost one of its most inane fans.

A few months after Katrina, Aunt Eva’s granddaughter, my cousin, was removing mold from her flooded home. She developed a cough that lasted too long, and one day she had trouble breathing. She went to the Emergency Room and the doctors told her it was a touch of asthma. She went home and died. She was as much a victim of Katrina as the hundreds who died in the flooding itself.

I wish Aunt Eva could see the Saints now. But I hope that she and her granddaughter have become black and gold spirits dancing above the city, blowing music into the streets that sounds remarkably like, “WHO DAT? WHO DAT? WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS?” And though it’s phrased like a series of questions, make no mistake about this: it’s a statement. So listen.