NEW ORLEANS: Though they won’t be watching the Los Angeles Rams vs. New England Patriots game, Who Dat Nation has other plans for Super Bowl Sunday.
The city of New Orleans is getting ready for a near-total boycott of the Super Bowl, following one of the most contentious plays in American sports history: the non-call of a penalty that would have allowed the New Orleans Saints to defeat the Rams in the NFC championship game. Parades and protests have begun, bars are refusing to air the game, and an outdoor party that was planned in less than two weeks sold out.
In addition to being a lifelong Saints fan, Lauren Braden, 36, has been selling voodoo dolls of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and referees. “We throw a party for every event,” she said. “We have a different mentality than most people because we throw parties for funerals in the streets.”
The missed call, which cost the Saints and their supporters—dubbed Who Dat Nation for their catchphrase, “Who Dat?”—a chance to win the Super Bowl on the home field of their bitter rival, the Atlanta Falcons, has already become part of New Orleans legend.
On the day following the game, Erick Engelhardt, 43, the founder of the Big Easy Mafia, a Saints fan club, said he could sense the loss throughout the city.
It was utterly deflated, according to Engelhardt. It was almost exactly like how it felt to watch someone die—a similar sort of pouting. It was just palpable. Although it was absurd, you could really feel it.
While there are passionate fan bases for many NFL teams across the country, few are as ingrained in their respective cities as the Saints are in New Orleans. The Saints were the only major professional sports team in New Orleans for many years. Fans of the team suffered years of little to no success; they even went so far as to earn the unfortunate moniker “Aints” and invented the use of paper bags.
