Super Bowl XLVII in New Orleans is another step in the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, and 2018 Super Bowl would help complete it
The Super Bowl is different, the closest we have in this country to a national sports holiday. That is why it is such a tremendous thing that the game has come back and why it has to come back in 2018 for New Orleans’ Tri-Centennial celebration.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Felix Rainey sees New Orleans in its beauty and devastation that lingers still. His vision is for a Super Bowl return in 2018 for the city’s Tricentennial where the good times will return.
NEW ORLEANS — The Super Bowl has returned to New Orleans this week and it is an event, for now at least, that is the last act of a magnificent comeback by a truly great American city. New Orleans officially shows the country and the world that is all the way back now from Katrina, which did even worse here than Sandy did in Staten Island and Breezy Point and the Jersey Shore.
So the big game comes back here for the first time since 2002, since Adam Vinatieri kicked a field goal and beat the Rams for a kid named Tom Brady and the Patriots. But no Super Bowl game, not Patriots vs. Rams or even this game between the Ravens and 49ers on Sunday, can ever be the biggest game of football ever played in this city, because that will always be the one the Saints played — and won because of a blocked punt by a Saints player named Steve Gleason, now suffering from ALS — in September of 2006 after Katrina.
That was the night when a national television audience saw New Orleans get up.
“There will never be,” James Carville, the chairman of the host committee for this Super Bowl, was saying on Thursday, “a more important sports event than that in this city or in this state.”
Then James Carville, a New Orleans resident, said, “But this one we got comin’ up on Sunday ain’t bad.”
Ain’t bad, ain’t enough.
Not only is the Super Bowl back here for the first time in a long time, it should be coming back again in 2018, so that a city that knows a fair amount about throwing a party can throw the best one in its history. Because 2018 is the 300th anniversary of the city of New Orleans, and even though the Super Bowl for that year hasn’t been awarded yet, how can the NFL not bring it back here?
“The Super Bowl is back where it’s supposed to be on Sunday,” a man named Felix Rainey is saying on Thursday morning, “and in five years, this is the only place where it should be.”
Felix Rainey is New Orleans born, Charity Hospital, and New Orleans raised, Seventh Ward. He has done a little bit of everything in his life in the city, starting with when he was a “pot boy” at restaurants in the French Quarter. He has worked as a dishwasher and a waiter and a banquet manager and now, at the age of 58, he is a waiter in the Club Lounge of the Windsor Court Hotel.
On this morning he is standing near a window in that lounge, looking out at the Mississippi on a spectacular, sun-splashed day, pointing out places at the foot of Canal St. where the ships were docked after Katrina and where the first responders were living, showing you where the residents of this city, a city that knows all about the pain and suffering and loss of Staten Island and Breezy Point and the Jersey Shore and all the other places that Sandy tried to level, came for food and shelter and medicine after it had happened here.
“We all watched the path of Sandy from here,” Felix Rainey is saying, “watched the map for the two days before it hit, and it was like watching nature come for us all over again. At first I didn’t want to believe that it was going to hit New York and New Jersey the way it did, was praying that somehow it would end up out to sea. But when it did hit New York, we felt like it had hit us.”
Felix Rainey pauses, standing there with the river behind him, remembering what it was like when the water came over the levees in other parts of his city, and says, “The only way you can understand it is if it happened to you. That’s why all of us in New Orleans, and especially ones like me who’ve lived here our whole lives, feel such pride this week that we’ve been trusted with the Super Bowl coming back here.”
He smiles and says, “Once and for all this is our way of saying, ‘We back.’”
Rainey speaks then of all the other events that have once again made New Orleans feel like a capital of American sports, the BCS Championship Game and the Final Four staged at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome last April and the NBA All-Star Game that is on its way. But he knows that the Super Bowl is different, the closest we have in this country to a national sports holiday.
That is why it is such a tremendous thing that the game has come back and why it has to come back in 2018 for New Orleans’ Tri-Centennial celebration. We know about the great beating heart and character of New Orleans. Everyone has watched as the healing between the league and the city has begun this week, in the aftermath of what happened to the Saints’ season because of BountyGate.
Part of that healing occurred at Felix Rainey’s hotel on Wednesday night, a dinner honoring former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, the current commissioner, Roger Goodell, in attendance, the current mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, looking out in the audience at Goodell on Wednesday night and saying, “We want you back.”
“Come back in 2018,” Felix Rainey says, “and see what kind of party we can put on for you.”
He says he was a “Coca-Cola” boy at old Tulane Stadium back in 1967 when the Saints played their first game there. He has seen a lot since then in New Orleans, seen his city get knocked down the way it did by Katrina and get back up.
“The sun’s back out in New Orleans,” is the way Rainey put it on Thursday, looking out at the water beyond Canal. The Super Bowl is back in New Orleans. Was away for 11 years. Needs to be back in five.
So the big game comes back here for the first time since 2002, since Adam Vinatieri kicked a field goal and beat the Rams for a kid named Tom Brady and the Patriots. But no Super Bowl game, not Patriots vs. Rams or even this game between the Ravens and 49ers on Sunday, can ever be the biggest game of football ever played in this city, because that will always be the one the Saints played — and won because of a blocked punt by a Saints player named Steve Gleason, now suffering from ALS — in September of 2006 after Katrina.
That was the night when a national television audience saw New Orleans get up.
“There will never be,” James Carville, the chairman of the host committee for this Super Bowl, was saying on Thursday, “a more important sports event than that in this city or in this state.”
Then James Carville, a New Orleans resident, said, “But this one we got comin’ up on Sunday ain’t bad.”
Ain’t bad, ain’t enough.
Charlie Riedel/AP
Preparations for Super Bowl XLVII are made around the Superdome.
Not only is the Super Bowl back here for the first time in a long time, it should be coming back again in 2018, so that a city that knows a fair amount about throwing a party can throw the best one in its history. Because 2018 is the 300th anniversary of the city of New Orleans, and even though the Super Bowl for that year hasn’t been awarded yet, how can the NFL not bring it back here?
“The Super Bowl is back where it’s supposed to be on Sunday,” a man named Felix Rainey is saying on Thursday morning, “and in five years, this is the only place where it should be.”
Felix Rainey is New Orleans born, Charity Hospital, and New Orleans raised, Seventh Ward. He has done a little bit of everything in his life in the city, starting with when he was a “pot boy” at restaurants in the French Quarter. He has worked as a dishwasher and a waiter and a banquet manager and now, at the age of 58, he is a waiter in the Club Lounge of the Windsor Court Hotel.
On this morning he is standing near a window in that lounge, looking out at the Mississippi on a spectacular, sun-splashed day, pointing out places at the foot of Canal St. where the ships were docked after Katrina and where the first responders were living, showing you where the residents of this city, a city that knows all about the pain and suffering and loss of Staten Island and Breezy Point and the Jersey Shore and all the other places that Sandy tried to level, came for food and shelter and medicine after it had happened here.
“We all watched the path of Sandy from here,” Felix Rainey is saying, “watched the map for the two days before it hit, and it was like watching nature come for us all over again. At first I didn’t want to believe that it was going to hit New York and New Jersey the way it did, was praying that somehow it would end up out to sea. But when it did hit New York, we felt like it had hit us.”
Felix Rainey pauses, standing there with the river behind him, remembering what it was like when the water came over the levees in other parts of his city, and says, “The only way you can understand it is if it happened to you. That’s why all of us in New Orleans, and especially ones like me who’ve lived here our whole lives, feel such pride this week that we’ve been trusted with the Super Bowl coming back here.”
Rainey at his home in New Orleans.
He smiles and says, “Once and for all this is our way of saying, ‘We back.’”
Rainey speaks then of all the other events that have once again made New Orleans feel like a capital of American sports, the BCS Championship Game and the Final Four staged at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome last April and the NBA All-Star Game that is on its way. But he knows that the Super Bowl is different, the closest we have in this country to a national sports holiday.
That is why it is such a tremendous thing that the game has come back and why it has to come back in 2018 for New Orleans’ Tri-Centennial celebration. We know about the great beating heart and character of New Orleans. Everyone has watched as the healing between the league and the city has begun this week, in the aftermath of what happened to the Saints’ season because of BountyGate.
Part of that healing occurred at Felix Rainey’s hotel on Wednesday night, a dinner honoring former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, the current commissioner, Roger Goodell, in attendance, the current mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, looking out in the audience at Goodell on Wednesday night and saying, “We want you back.”
“Come back in 2018,” Felix Rainey says, “and see what kind of party we can put on for you.”
He says he was a “Coca-Cola” boy at old Tulane Stadium back in 1967 when the Saints played their first game there. He has seen a lot since then in New Orleans, seen his city get knocked down the way it did by Katrina and get back up.
“The sun’s back out in New Orleans,” is the way Rainey put it on Thursday, looking out at the water beyond Canal. The Super Bowl is back in New Orleans. Was away for 11 years. Needs to be back in five.
No comments:
Post a Comment