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New Orleans Saints brought salvation to their city; now they’ll try to bring a Super Bowl championship

By Jerry Izenberg/Columnist Emeritus

January 31, 2010, 7:00AM

Jerry Izenberg, The Star-Ledger’s columnist emeritus, is one of only three daily newspaper columnists to have covered every Super Bowl. That gives him 43 more appearances at the big game than the New Orleans Saints, who will finally step onto center stage next Sunday for Super Bowl XLIV against the Indianapolis Colts. He begins his coverage with this piece.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — There are voices in the wind that ripple through the palm trees here . . . voices that had their genesis in the Land of the Mississippi River . . . voices that tiptoe through the narrow, winding streets of New Orleans’ French Quarter … voices that whisper from the above-ground cemeteries that are as much a part of the city’s unique lore as its garishly dressed local Mardi Gras krewes.

Go ahead and laugh, but don’t even try to tell me you ever dreamed the New Orleans Saints would one day make it to the Super Bowl. The days are long gone of Marie Laveau, the voodoo priestess whose name once stood alone as their city’s signature symbol at a time when chicken bones foretold the future.

There’s a new sorcerer in town. Sean Payton is the name and minor miracles are his game.

His football team gave the citizens of New Orleans a post-Katrina slice of hope in which to believe when the mayor, the governor of Louisiana and, most of all, FEMA could not.

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