The biggest sports-related celebration in America yesterday wasn’t in Los Angeles or Boston, and it wasn’t even in Atlanta where the Super Bowl actually was. Turns out the largest party in the country yesterday went down in New Orleans; a city that chose to actively ignore the big game because of one blown referee call.
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The New Orleans Saints, by all rights, should have been in the Super Bowl yesterday, battling it out with the New England Patriots who instead defeated the LA Rams in one of the most god-awful, piss-boring Super Bowls in recent memory.
The Saints weren’t in the game though, because they lost to the Rams in the NFC Championship game two weeks ago thanks largely to a contentious late-game referee non-call.
The entire city of New Orleans spent all of yesterday declaring extremely loudly that they weren’t mad. They were laughing, actually.
So while the rest of the country – and the world, really – glued themselves to TVs and tried to stay awake during the lowest-scoring Super Bowl in history, New Orleans took to the streets and partied instead.
Saints fans took Sunday to celebrate their team and city! #NOLA pic.twitter.com/feZyV6uSbp
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) February 5, 2019
#Saints fans turn their anger into a reason to party ⚜️ #BestFans pic.twitter.com/iPu583mQVe
— New Orleans Saints (@Saints) February 3, 2019
#BoycottBowl Only in New Orleans pic.twitter.com/tKGDi4ROGP
— Patrick “Diddy” Robertson (@Made_Man_5) February 4, 2019
#boycottbowl the Saints really brung back choppa rock style pic.twitter.com/BNpZA1TrVm
— Patrick “Diddy” Robertson (@Made_Man_5) February 4, 2019
@TheEllenShow Who Dat said the gonna Cheat them Saints. Second Line thru the city. #BoycottBowl #nocrime#lotsoflove pic.twitter.com/tgJ3BGfWXq
— Dinah Blanchard (@dtblanchard57) February 4, 2019
Thousands of Saints fans in downtown New Orleans for a massive anti-Super Bowl second-line. #saints #nola #whodat #whodatnation pic.twitter.com/7dBLLmHySY
— SaintsNOW (@SaintsNOW) February 3, 2019
All this because they didn’t get into the Super Bowl. Absolutely wild scenes.
The party came a full 24 hours before the city’s annual Mardi Gras celebrations kicked off, with people simply deciding to get it going a day early; bars around the city screened the Saints successful 2010 Super Bowl instead of this year’s one, and viewership in New Orleans subsequently dropped to an all-time low.
The fact that the game wound up sucking tremendously? Icing on the cake as far as Louisianans were concerned.
Local newspaper The Times-Picayune took it one step further by dragging the shitty game into the dirt thanks to its front and back pages, the former of which was just a blank, white sheet with the words “Super Bowl? What Super Bowl?” written on it.
Who dat! Today’s front page of The Times-Picayune is 💯 #whodat #superbowllie #saints @NOLAnews pic.twitter.com/tHbVPksVBa
— Carlie Kollath Wells (@carlie_kollath) February 4, 2019
They’re not mad. Not a single one of them. They’re all laughing.
