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Jim Gray comparing the NBA Finals to the moon landing.

The Super Bowl is a big deal.  The ratings are huge, the commercials cost a small fortune, the halftime show is an overwrought spectacle.  It’s a football game that has been turned into a defining cultural event.  Given the grandiosity associated with the Super Bowl it should surprise no one that there are douchebag members of the sports media who try and add significance that transcends what is just a football game.  With the ESPN media machine working for a more than three years to convince you that the Saints have rebuilt New Orleans following Katrina, it came as a big shock that the most non-sensical word vomit came via Jim Gray at Westwood One.

(Hear the excerpt here courtesy of the Boers and Bernstein show on 670am Chicago.   Skip forward to number 5 for the Gray audio.)

“Finally something good has happened to the city of New Orleans and the State of Louisiana.  A team that’s first 20 seasons didn’t have a winning record.  It led to boos and bags over the fans heads.  The Ain’ts, they ain’t no more.

So far so good for Jim.  He has correctly pointed out that the Saints for most of my lifetime have been associated with the dregs of the NFL.  They could be conservatively described as a hapless franchise for most of their existence.  The fact that the Saints won a Super Bowl in and of itself is one hell of a story.  It’s one that should be told.

Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city, the winds so strong, the water too deep.

Something is starting to get deep around here…..

Like many of the city’s residents the team itself was homeless.  Bouncing from Baton Rouge to San Antonio, the team barely held together, but didn’t move permanently and began to rebuild.

He’s trying to build a feeling of symmetry between the residents of the city and the team.  In the respect of being displaced because of the storm, he’s right.  Beware, we are nearing the proverbial fork in the road because it won’t be long before….

Funny how a city that was ravaged by wind, is now saluting a Brees.

….we are off the tracks.  Terrific pun Jim!  The problem is that the damage caused by winds were all together minor to those caused by the storm surge that overwhelmed the levy system causing the flooding that truly devastated New Orleans.  If your are taking the stance that the flooding was the result of a massive storm surge that was driven by high winds than I apologize.  Since I’m positive that you are twisting the events for a lame turn of phrase, I apologize for nothing.

When Drew Brees arrived four seasons ago, it was beginning of the end of the suffering for both the city and the franchise.  He said he felt it was his calling, his destiny to come to the Saints at their worst time.

Are you serious?  While you can argue, convincingly, that Brees saved the Saints franchise from relocation, it’s quite another to think he ended the suffering in New Orleans.  Did the houses rebuild themselves?  Did the dead come back to life?  They didn’t?  (Surely football can resurrect the dead.  How else can you explain Pat Summerall calling the Cotton Bowl this year?)

(For Drew:  Would destiny have still called you to New Orleans had the Dolphins made you the offer you were looking for or was it just a matter of New Orleans being your only opportunity to be the starter?  Would it still have been your calling if you had gone 5-11 this season?)

Now they are calling him Breesus, the city renamed Drew Orleans.

Unleash the dramatic imagery!  Is anyone really calling him this or did you make this up because it fit your piece?  At least you stopped short of having Breesus walk across the flood water to rebuild the temple (Superdome).  Nice restraint Jim!

The Mannings were the first family of the Saints, the first family of the city of New Orleans.  Now they get the prize they so long wanted, by Archie and his boys, a Super Bowl Championship for the Saints, though it comes in a fashion they would have preferred to avoid….”

No shit.

I can’t stand hyperbolic garbage like this from sports media.  Sports are a wonderful diversion, whether you are trying to escape large scale problems like homelessness after a hurricane or the mundane desire to have a few beers with your friends.  When the games are over you go back to the reality of real life whatever that may be.  If you want to make the argument that New Orleans was in desperate need for diversion from their problems, some escapism from a daunting rebuilding process, and a means to connect with one another that doesn’t involve sad stories and hardship, then by all means they deserve it.  If you want to stretch this out to say that NFL football is rebuilding a city you are an incurable, irredeemable moron.  Rebuilding a city takes money, hard work and the collective will of the residents.

Jim Gray thinks it’s measurable in Lombardi Trophies.