Bless You, Boys -- Again

It's the off-week for the Saints summer training camp, and instead of the usual diversions coaches dream up to help the team cohere and stay together while not actually practicing (like team bowling, for example), Coach Peyton and team owners the Benson Family have come up with something quite different.

For the past few days, the Saints have gotten onto buses (one hopes air-conditioned!) and driven hours to the end of Plaquemines Parish and, the next day, down to Grand Isle, to meet with the folks most closely affected by the Gulf Oil Spill. They gather in a local community center with fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, and oil workers and their families, and other folks like shop owners and catering workers and restaurant owners and their families, and listen to their stories. They shake hands with hundreds of people with work-hardened hands, get countless hugs from maw-maws, and ruffle the haircuts of hundreds of kids. It's like being politicians, only they're not running for anything.

And for good measure, they carry in the sacred Lombardi Trophy and everyone there gets a chance to touch it, to lay hands on it. (I picture Sean Peyton polishing the smudgy hand prints off the thing with a chamois on the bus on the way back home.) And everyone takes advantage of this, pressing forward with their hands out-stretched like supplicants to a shrine, like the Lombardi has a magic power to heal and restore.

All of this would have been enough and I would bless them for it and be grateful they're the kind of team they are, but they didn't stop there. The Saints are offering for raffle one of the "extra" Superbowl rings they will receive as 2009 Superbowl Champs (apparently, each winning team gets a few extra, to gift any way they want -- who knew??), with ALL proceeds going to Gulf Relief. The lucky fan who wins will get his or her ring at the season-opener game against Minnesota in September. The minimum order is 5 tickets for $10, but the more tickets you buy, the more they are discounted (like, 100 tickets are $75).

Of course, Big Man and I bought tickets right away, as did I'm sure, nearly every member of Who Dat Nation who could possibly squeeze together $10 or more. When I went online last night to check on it, I Googled "Saints Superbowl ring raffle" and discovered that there were close to 650,000 Google pages devoted to this topic. The Saints announced that they were hoping to raise $1 million from the raffle -- but I'll be sure surprised if they don't get more than that.

Once again, the Saints under Sean Peyton are showing that they are more than just a professional football team and that they "get it" about their role in the city's and area's recovery. All I can say is, Bless you, Boys, bless you.