Brandon's Pop Culture Site

For those of you that know me well, you know that I am a football fanatic. I love all football and will watch most any game that comes on if it is interesting. But I bleed black and gold, I have been a New Orleans Saints fan all my life. That has always been a thankless job as any other Saint fan could attest to. But that has all changed in one off-season.

I have seen the Saints have some productive off-season in the past. Off-season where they signed Joe Horn, off-season where they have picked up La’Roi Glover, off-season where they drafted Ricky Williams and Deuce McCallister. But this Off-season has been the best for the franchise EVER! First the pick up of Drew Brees through free agency, an underrated addition. The Saints get a lot of credit for that, but not nearly the credit they deserve. Drew Brees instantly made our offense one of the most explosive in league. He adds consistency and good judgement to a position where we have had neither over the last few years. It could be argued that he lacks Aaron Brook’s raw talent. Brooks had tons of talent, but lacked that ability to ever have it translate into success. I will say this for Brooks though, his first season as a New Orleans Saints quarterback was an amazing season, since then his career and the Saints records have done nothing but go downhill. For those of you that are interested, Brooks was released by the Saints and is now an Oakland Raider. The place where a lot of players have managed to revitalize their careers and since that is an AFC team I wish him all the luck. It should be a good fit for him there.

If the Drew Brees acquisition had been the only big pick up this off-season we as Saints fans could have declared the off-season a success, but for what maybe the first time ever, the football gods have smiled on the Saints. Ever since the draft order was known and we knew the Houston Texans were going to have the first pick it has always been assumed they would take Reggie Bush with the first pick. Assumed really is too light of a word to use here, I followed all the pre-draft reporting quite thoroughly, since the Saints were picking second. I must have read every single mock draft, and I never saw one, not one that did not have the Texans taking Bush. Why wouldn’t they?

Reggie Bush is possibly the most exciting player to come out of college football in my lifetime. He has been compared to Gale Sayers and Barry Sanders. But he is really a different kind of player than either one of them. Those comparisons are made because Bush is fast, has great vision, and can change direction on a dime. He is coming into the NFL listed as a running back, but that label does not do justice. Reggie Bush scores touchdowns in too many ways to just be considered a running back. He returns punt and kickoffs, he lines up in the slot as a receiver, catches passes out of the backfield, and he also runs the football. On any given play he can explode and run for seventy or eighty yards. And if he gets into the secondary, nobody is catching him. He is a once in lifetime kind of player that makes his whole team better and causes severe match-up problems for the opposition.

We may never know the true motivation as to why the Texans passed on Bush, it could be the rent scandal his family was involved with the week before the draft or it could be just to save money, but we do know this, they didn’t pass on Reggie Bush and draft Mario Williams because they thought it would make their team better. That line of thinking just doesn’t make any sense. The best person available makes your team better. That was the Saints line of thinking anyway. Did we need a running back, no. Deuce McCallister is our running back, a great running back that we are happy to have. And he will be listed as the starting running back at the opening of the season. In fact this situation is not a lot different than the one Bush had at USC, he was not the only running back there, LenDale White led the team in rushing yards, but Bush led the team with all purpose yards. Mark my words, that is exactly what will happen in New Orleans too, McCallister will lead in rushing, Bush will lead in all purpose.

But there is something more important that Bush brings to New Orleans. Chris Berman of ESPN said after the Saints drafted Bush, "Congratulation New Orleans, you are now on the football map." If you want an idea of what he meant by that just look at Atlanta since drafting Michael Vick. People all over the country wear Vick jersey’s and root for the Falcons because of Michael Vick, same thing for Brett Farve and the Packers. Reggie Bush will and already is doing that for New Orleans. Season ticket orders shot through the roof after the draft, people are already going online and ordering Reggie Bushes Saints jersey, in fact Reebok is already reporting they have sold 15,000 Reggie Bush jerseys sold, and he doesn’t even have a number yet. Hopefully though it will be 5, I could write a whole other blog on that though. He has, without even playing a down in the NFL, completely revitalized the market of my favorite sports team. For that alone he is now my favorite athlete and I will ordering my Reggie Bush jersey this summer, I may even get a little one for my son so we can wear them together on game day.