The Super Bowl will unite people of Haiti and New Orleans
OPINION - On Super Bowl Sunday, the people of Haiti and New Orleans will to stand side by side in allegiance...
The distance between New Orleans and Haiti roughly spans the prodigious lengths of a Peyton Manning touchdown bomb. But come Super Bowl Sunday, the people of both those regions will to stand side by side in allegiance.
In a procreation largely born of the fruits of perseverance and the hope of resurrection, the otherwise distinct and distanced metropolises have come to symbolize the spirit of one indivisible union. And just why wouldn’t they? Just five short years ago, Hurricane Katrina heartlessly rendered the citizens of New Orleans in the same depressed and desolate state the people of Haiti find themselves burdened by today.
It’s realizations the depths of those that make times the likes of Sunday’s kickoff instances where the life of the games clearly come to transcend the sport in them, junctures when the overall social significance of such events easily come to outdistance the intrigue generated by them. One of those classic moments where no matter what team you root for, we can all feel good about championing the exact same cause.
“This is about trying to be a champion, trying to bring back something not only to myself but everyone in the Haitian community,” Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma, one of just 16 Haitian-born players to play in the NFL told International Newswire Service France24.com. “My intentions are to go down there and be productive,” Vilma added of his post Super Bowl plans. “I want to help, whether it be to clear out the devastation, try to help build homes, whatever, not just look around and say it’s a sad situation.”
And as so many of his brothers and sisters eagerly await his arrival, they are no doubt uplifted by the spirit of the place he now calls home. And who would have predicted it all for the Crescent City? No, not so much the amazement born of the Saints’ Super Bowl run so soon in the wake of Katrina, but rather the simple survival of the franchise itself.
Much credit for that must go to former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue who fought relentlessly to keep the team in the New Orleans even when team owner Thomas Benson was widely rumored to be of a completely different mindset.
“The Saints can be a magnet for other people and businesses to return to the community and be part of the recovery,” Tagliabue said in 2006. But even more to the point, he meant every word of what he said. In essence, he harbored a level of resolve for that reality the people of Haiti must now house for themselves in maintaining their own homeland.
No, the two regions don’t share much of a proximity, but clearly they are now forever connected. Connected in spirit as much as they have been in the tragedies that bear all the similarities.
Damn the concept of the Cowboys being America’s team. The resolve of the Saints has earned the applause of an entire nation.
