There is something rather queer about the New Orleans Saints.  It really hit me when Drew Brees said on the Jay Leno show that his favorite television show is “Glee”.

I had been watching Drew Brees for three seasons and increasingly feeling that he wasn’t like the other cocky, good-looking, star quarterbacks of the NFL.  I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but for me, it was something about his blue eyes.  When the camera comes in close on other quarterbacks, you don’t really see their eyes in the same was you see Drew Brees’s—the intensity and determination, but also something kind and, dare I say, vulnerable?  What is that saying about the eyes being the window to the soul? 

Midway through this 2009-2010 season, my partner and I started commenting on how Drew Brees seemed to have a different sort of masculinity than other quarterbacks.  Sitting on the sofa drinking beer, eating Nachos, and aggressively cheering on the Saints, once in awhile, one of us would say something like, “It seems like he’s actually a nice guy” or “He’s not a show-boater”, or “He’s someone I’d like to hang out with.”   On our sofa, in our household, these revelations about a man—a football player, no less, are what you call a ringing endorsement of an alternative masculinity.  This sentiment turned into a full-blown crush for both of us when Drew Brees said his favorite television program was “Glee”. 

And there’s more.  Drew Brees says that coming to play for New Orleans was a “calling”.  I can’t help thinking that he identified with New Orleans being knocked down, written off as out, but refusing to give up after Brees himself experienced a potentially career-ending shoulder injury, was written off, and, like New Orleans, refused to give up and came back stronger than ever to prove the naysayers wrong.   Drew Brees identifies with, feels compassion for, and wants to take care of a city that had recently been on its knees.  Interesting, don’t you think?

After winning the Superbowl and being named the game MVP, Brees took his son into his arms and, with tears in his eyes, kissed him and whispered something into the one-year-old’s ear.  When asked what he whispered, Drew Brees simply said, “I just told him that I love him.”  Brees also explained that his son was wearing head phones to protect his ears from the crowd noise.  The cover of Sports Illustrated featured Drew Brees smiling, tears in his eyes, and holding his son.  Not an aggressive, victorious grimace; a warm, loving, unabashedly joyful smile.  I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is not exactly the NFL masculinity we’re used to seeing.  Could it be a desire to nurture that I see in his eyes and mistook for vulnerability? 

But there is so much more to this team than Drew Brees’s eyes, loving relationship with his son, and penchant for musicals that focus on the interpersonal drama of a high school glee club.  Saints linebacker, Scott Fujita has stated on more than one occasion that he supports gay and lesbian rights.  When was the last time you heard an NFL player come out publicly to support gay and lesbian rights?   In the wake of CBS deciding to air the Focus on the Family-Tebow anti-abortion commercial, Fujita also said that he is for abortion rights.  You should hear people in New Orleans talk about Fujita.   His support of gay, lesbian, and abortion rights doesn’t compromise his masculinity or his appeal; it enhances it. 

But New Orleans Saints fans are not your typical football fans.  Look at the crowd at any home game.  Its diversity in terms of age, race, and gender makes it different from other home game crowds.  Only in the Superdome during a Saints home game will you see men of all ages and races in costume (real costumes —not just the war paint of team colors), elderly, African American women who have season tickets and always come to the game together as a group, lawyers and CEO’s in suits, academics in NFL jerseys, and children of all genders--all coming together as one to cheer on a football team.  Saints fans talk openly and with pride about crying when they lose and when they win.  A couple of days before the Superbowl, there was a buzz about the magical number 44 (The Superbowl is 4 years and 4 months after Hurricane Katrina, the Saints won the NFC Championship 4 minutes and 44 seconds into overtime, Obama is the 44th president, and so on).  Rather than being the hard, statistical, fact-flexing badge of “real” fandom in pro sports, Saints fans were talking about numbers in this Superbowl as mystic and magical.  And who can forget that one of the largest celebrations of the Saints was the "Buddy and Bobby's Brawd's Bunch-of-Men Dress March".  Thousands of men donned dresses, heels, wigs, and make-up to honor Buddy Diliberto and celebrate the Saints first trip to the Superbowl.  As I watched the men parade down the street, it struck me that they weren’t mocking femininity in the way men usually do when they dress as women, say, for Halloween.  They were football fans—Saints fans who costume on a regular basis, sure.  But NFL football fans that also happened to be wearing dresses.  We use French spelling to queer words and express city pride, for godsake!  Geaux Saints! 

If you’re not yet convinced that there is something rather queer about the New Orleans Saints, look at how the players and coaches frame their success.  Noam Chomsky has talked about America’s obsession with football as training in irrational jingoism.  According to Chomsky, team sports teach a population to blindly follow authority and support the violent annihilation of the enemy or “Other”.   I never heard any of the Saints players, or fans for that matter, talk about annihilating the enemy or the other team.  It has always been about lifting up New Orleans and showing the world that the people of New Orleans are resilient.  From the beginning of the season to the post-Superbowl interviews, all of the players and coaches consistently talked about “doing it for the city and people of New Orleans”. It’s as if the team were supporting the fans rather than the other way around.  Not Generals and soldiers leading a militaristic assault on another city, the New Orleans Saints were framing their season and Superbowl in terms of healing and nurturing. Indianapolis as the opponent receded into the background because it was never about beating the Colts; it was about healing and nurturing the city and people of New Orleans.   

And therein lies the difference between this team and all those that have come before and those that will come after.  The Saints’ geographical and cultural home is the city of New Orleans.   New Orleans, the American home of Mardi Gras --a city-wide, two week celebration of turning convention on its head.   Where costuming is de regueur and voodoo is as present in everyday life as any other religion.  Where the pleasures of the flesh like food, drink, and sex are ritualized and raised to a spiritual calling.  Where contradiction is not only tolerated; it’s expected and celebrated.  In the words of poet Chuck Perkins, New Orleans is

…where former slaves pay homage to the first Americans
by masking in suits of rhine stones and bright colored feathers
that transform security guards into Indian Chiefs
doing rain dances on Congo Square
where the drums drum
and the wine drink
and the big chief sing
somebody give me a quarter
cause pretty big chief want some water

if you can envision the souls of yesterday
living in the music
that rises from the cracks in the sidewalks
New Orleans is your dream
With a heart as soft
As the spanish moss
Dripping from centuries old oak trees…

(Chuck Perkins, “New Orleans”)

You see, New Orleans is not your typical American city, so it’s no surprise that the New Orleans Saints are not your typical football team and Saints fans are not your typical football fans.   In New Orleans, the feminine is not something to be rejected—it’s not the abject other; it’s the way we do things.  We marvel at the “pretty” Big Chief as much as the physical dominance of our defensive line.  We’re resilient in the face of adversity, playful, and love to dress-up.  We live in our bodies and in the here and now rather than by the clock and abstract notions of success.  We see relationships with family and community as more important than money or power.   We are willing to help each other and are not ashamed to receive help when we need it.  

The Saints players and coaches live here; they get it.  It’s obvious to me that the soul of New Orleans flows through their veins in the way they talk about the city, the fans, and what it means to them to be Superbowl champs.  It’s about being nurturing through victory, using skill to support and build up rather than tear down and dominate.  It’s about doing a decidedly masculine thing in a rather feminine way.  It’s football in drag.  You can’t get more queer than that!

I grew up in Chicago and in a family that treated team sports like a religion.  I learned well that there was no place for femininity, sympathy for an opponent or losing home team, or playfulness when it came to team sports, especially football.  The Chicago Bears were serious, masculine, jingoistic business and I was as good at and enthusiastic as the next person about embodying Bears Fan.  Watching sports, especially football, has always been one of the places where my masculinity struts its stuff.

My sports fan masculinity is different in New Orleans.  In New Orleans, my football masculinity can finally be dolled up in the feminine drag performance it has always been craving.  Where else can a woman wear false eyelashes, a tutu, gold sequined bra and panties, and a Drew Brees jersey while talking with men at the table about Shockey’s last catch and forward motion, Bush’s ability to return a kickoff, and Drew Brees’s eyes, and, when the Saints’ defensive line blitzes, yell “Get him!” with as much virility, conviction, and enthusiasm as any Bears fan and not get a second look?  

New Orleans.  That’s where. 

New Orleans.  The home of the World Champion New Orleans Saints.

New Orleans...the place where I, a queer, feminist, football fan, is finally home and cheering for the home team.

Geaux Saints! 

Vive New Orleans.