The Uniqueness Of A New Orleans Saints License Plate
Ever seen someone with a New Orleans Saints license plate – out of state? That’s either a true football fan or an individual wanting to demonstrate solidarity with the city of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Obviously, it is generally both, a sports fan with a social conscience.
Sports are generally considered to be pure entertainment, something where everyone can forget about real-world issues and troubles and indulge in a primal urge to compete – or live vicariously through those who do. And so NFL license plates are popular, the mark of a dedicated sports fan, and they sell by the tens of thousands.
However it is a good thing to see and read about in the papers when sports aspires towards something more than just multi-million-dollar salaries. Not that there’s anything wrong with making money, but it’s nice to see that it is not all about money, particularly with some thing which moves so many individuals so passionately.
And so rooting for the Saints and even going so far as to mount a New Orleans Saints license plate came to be something of a civic duty, almost, for the socially aware sports fan, if you will. For there’s nothing most Americans like better than their football than to root for the underdog, and sports franchises symbolize their cities in a way that few other goodwill ambassadors can.
And so it was that everyone cheered on the Saints in their first post-Katrina game. It was not just about scores and bragging rights anymore; it was about a shared concern for fellow Americans, a way to show one’s own compassion and even support, even if only symbolic – and of course, in sports, it’s all about symbolism. Just as Katrina, in a catastrophic catharsis of Biblical proportions, symbolized a country stunned at its own impotence and bad luck. And what does sports center around if not power and the vagaries of fate?