New Orleans Saints Path To Super Bowl In Miami

For the New Orleans Saints and their fans, this weekend's Super Bowl is supposedly more than a game. It is being portrayed by many folks as the end of a redemptive journey from the Hurricane Katrina nightmare.

In that portrayal, however, I have seen no previous mention of one unlikely fact. A piece of that journey actually began here.

In San Jose? Yes, in San Jose.

This is where the Saints were when Katrina hit in late August 2005. Such a weird week that was. On a Sunday afternoon, knowing the hurricane was bearing down on New Orleans, the Saints decided to leave town early for a Thursday night exhibition in Oakland.

Of course, that meant the Saints needed to practice somewhere in the Bay Area for a few days. They struck a deal with San Jose State.

Which explains why, at the very moment that Katrina slammed into Louisiana and began ripping the roof off the Superdome, the Saints were working on their two-minute offense at a campus field off Seventh Street.

I remember being there as the players walked off the turf, their eyes glazed over. Less than 24 hours earlier, they had been at their own training facility, where all was familiar. Now they were "... here. Where? Someplace in California. Someplace strange where the sun was shining. That's all they knew. That's what I have in the notes I saved.

"Unbelievable," said Saints quarterback Aaron Brooks, fighting his emotions that day. "We were eating dinner last
night at a place near our hotel, and people here were going about their lives like nothing was happening. "... We just want to hear that everything is all right."

It was not all right, as the world would soon learn. Yet somehow, the Saints carried on. What else could they do? All of them had made arrangements for their families to evacuate New Orleans before the hurricane struck. But each day, before and after the players were bused to practice, they sat in their Fremont Marriott Hotel rooms as the heartbreak played out on television and they watched, numbly.

"Nobody knows when we get back, what we're going to see," said Saints coach Jim Haslett.

Pro athletes often try to act too cool, as if they are above the rest of the human race. The Saints did none of that in San Jose. Brent Brennan, a San Jose State assistant coach then and now, recalled Wednesday how he visited the Saints' practices and picked up right away how different things were.

"You could tell that their tempo wasn't the same, that their focus wasn't there," Brennan said. "They were just trying to make do. Some of our San Jose State players were also there watching, trying to get an idea of what it was like at that level, and I told them, 'You're not getting the real picture here of what the NFL's like. This is a team with hearts and minds somewhere else.' "

The Saints' arrangement with San Jose State worked well, because the school's team, preparing for its own season opener, practiced at 7 a.m. under a schedule preferred by coach Dick Tomey. That left the bulk of the day for the Saints to use SJSU's facilities, including the weight room and training room.

Under the circumstances, San Jose State didn't charge the Saints a dime. But as a goodwill gesture, the NFL team purchased $5,000 worth of tickets to the Spartans' opener. The athletic department distributed them to San Jose youth groups.

Finally, after a long three days, the Saints motored up to the Oakland Coliseum on Thursday night and lost to the Raiders 13-6. But what would happen next? By then, it was clear that the Saints' own practice complex in suburban New Orleans was not usable. Plus, the Superdome was out of commission indefinitely.

As a result, the Saints never really did go "home" that season. Instead, they flew to San Antonio and set up temporary headquarters. They split their home schedule between the Alamodome in that city and LSU's stadium in Baton Rouge. Predictably, they won only three games. Haslett was fired after the season.

Brooks might have had it worse, though. The quarterback, so openly emotional about Katrina, created a flap when he criticized Saints owner Tom Benson for essentially abandoning the team to a substandard situation in Texas. The Saints dumped him, and Brooks signed on to play quarterback for the miserable 2006 Raiders of Art Shell. He was sacked nine times in the season opener, dislocated a shoulder in the second game and was out of football a year later. He is now a developer in his Virginia hometown.

And what of the other Saints who endured that week in San Jose? Only a handful remain with the team, but the handful includes wide receiver Devery Henderson and defensive end Will Smith. If they win Sunday, I don't imagine they will send any thank-you notes to any of us in the 408. But if you're looking for another reason to pull for the underdog in this Super Bowl, you have one. For a few bizarre days in 2005, they were the San Jose Saints.