Saints fans stage Super Bowl protest
Fans wore shirts decrying no-call in NFC Championship
Saints fans outraged by their team’s loss in the NFC championship game were hardly about to let go of that frustration on the day of the Super Bowl. Ahead of the matchup Sunday between the Rams and Patriots, thousands of Saints supporters swarmed New Orleans streets in a demonstration that, in the spirit of the Big Easy, was as much of a party as a protest.
Dubbed the “Blackout and Gold Second-Line Parade,” referring to the Saints’ colours, the demonstration included many fans wearing team paraphernalia, as well as some with shirts bearing messages that decried an officiating no-call that helped Los Angeles win the NFC championship game.
Fans gathered Sunday near Jackson Square, a popular destination in the city’s French Quarter, to let their feelings be known, or just to join in the kind of raucous but generally joyous celebration for which New Orleans is famous. Referring to the location of the Super Bowl, one Saints fan told the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “I don’t think any losing team is going to have a party like we’re going to have here. It’s going to be better than what’s going on in Atlanta today.”
While some people elsewhere in the U.S. noted that the protest began ahead of the Super Bowl’s kickoff, potentially giving disaffected Saints fans time to watch the game if they so desired, many in the city have made a point of declaring that they would not watch, and a “Boycott Bowl” event was also staged Sunday in New Orleans. The Second Line event included a jazz funeral, to symbolically lay to rest a Saints season that many felt ended too soon.
“We’re angry,” Lauren Haydel, a Saints fan and business owner who started selling shirts featuring a referee Voodoo doll with pins sticking out of it, said last week, according to The Associated Press. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged earlier this week that an officiating error was made on the no-call, in which the Rams were not flagged for pass interference, costing the Saints a chance to run down the clock and end the game with a short field goal.