I Wanna Be in that Number

62 to 7. I would call that a victory.

Such was the final score of last night’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts–a game that I was able to watch firsthand right in the famous gold-sided Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

But wait–not only did I get to watch the game live in New Orleans; I got to watch it from the field. I watched every single one of those touchdowns happen, right in front of my face. Let me just say, football is much more exciting that way.

See, up until last night, my feelings towards football were rather noncommittal. I could take it or leave it–normally I just turned the channel. But being one of 73,000 football fans gathered under one giant dome, and to hear the thud of the leather ball as it hit the end zone along with a mass of uniform-clad human monsters, well, last night’s game made me a fast convert. Now I am a believer.

For the past two weeks I’ve been driving around Louisiana, observing the cult of football that has clearly eclipsed Catholicism as the state religion. Their Vatican is the Superdome and like all good Saints, they worship on Sunday. They party a whole day before the game starts, they party all during the game, and after the game is done and won, they really start to party.

So sign me up because I’m a fan of all that. I’m a fan of the lopsided winning patterns and I’m a fan of jambalaya tailgating from RVs the size of spaceships. I’m a fan of the street dancing and face painting and the thundering boom of seventy thousand people screaming, “WHO DAT?” in unison.

Sign me up as a fan because I always want to be there.

I wanna be in that number.