Wherever you go once you have the mud in your blood you are still a Louisianan.  Saints Fans don't stop being fans when they move somewhere else... You may be on the West Coast in LaLa land (which I liked very much) or the East Coast with all these yankees (The Pats are my second favorite team) or in Kansas or anywhere in between. You may not even have been born in Louisiana but once you become a Saints fan wherever you are... There you are... A Saints Fan. 

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You may be one of our heroes fighting for us somewhere across the world away from your family and home but you still have the mud in your blood.

Life isn’t always ‘easy’ in  Louisiana and it has been that way since the earliest days.  But we are a special blend and breed of people.   We prevail and we find joy in life. We love "our people".  And we stick by them. Blood is thicker than water and Louisiana blood is the thickest of all. And once someone is a Saint no matter where they were born they become "Our People".

Decades have gone by and we have stayed Fans.  We winced and we cringed and we certainly binged but…. They were still our Saints.

We took grief and mockery and had people wonder at our sanity (they probably did anyway just because we are who we are) for standing behind our Saints. 

Sure we screamed at them, sure we got mad at them but… they were still our people and you can be mad at your ‘people’ and still love them.  Still support them… and always be there for them.

And it has all paid off. The years of sitting in a bar in some other state being the only person there cheering for your team even when the score was abysmal… If they made a good play you shouted…

We made that poor old Sugar Bowl/Tulane Stadium creak with our fervor. We make the Dome thunder with the music of our chants... We are the Soul of our Team and they are our Saints who go do battle for us.  Up or Down we had a team that let itself be infused with the spirit of US... they became "Our People". 

In the past when people said "How can you STILL be a Saints Fan after all of these years" We just look at them and say….

They are our People… 

Where I come from "our People" means family – I am proud to be family with all of the other Saints Fans.  We are each other’s "People".

So, I love where we are today and I love our Saints and Fans for getting us here… but if we were 0-10… they would still be my Saints… and still be "My People".