I have covered Super Bowls, college football championship games, championship fights and have been in this business a long time, and nothing has ever matched the excitement and anticipation I had for the 1967 season with the Saints.

Since the NFL awarded New Orleans a franchise there has been a love affair with the fans in this area and the team. The late sportscaster Buddy Diliberto explained it like this: "Sometimes in a marriage you get mad and you have a separation or you fall out of love for a time, but you always come back to them. The one thing you can say and never get an argument about is the fact that the Saints have given their fans many reasons to stray."

This column is dedicated to the kids in the audience.

Despite all the complications from the outside world, Saints fans couldn't get enough news about the team in 1967.The media coverage of the team was limited and preseason games weren't on television.

The area was recovering from Hurricane Betsy that devastated a lot of south Louisiana, the Vietnam War was escalating, the Civil Rights movement was on, tensions were at a high mark between the United States and Russia and the race to get to the moon was getting headlines daily. But everywhere you went locally in 1967 all people wanted to talk about was the Saints. The news of getting an NFL franchise dominated everything else. New Orleans was now big league.

I was with The Times-Picayune then and was assigned to cover the Saints. John W. Mecom Jr. became president of the franchise and everyone was in his corner. He was 27, rich, energetic. very personable and extremely polite. His father had made a fortune in the oil business, but John Jr. grew up a child of privilege and didn't have any real knowledge of running a company, hiring qualified people and then enjoying the results. John Jr. wanted to be successful like his father, but he didn't have the business smarts or life experiences like his father.

John Jr.'s faults began with not hiring a top football guys to run his team from the beginning. Sen. Russell Long and Gov. John McKeithen made him sign Jimmy Taylor away from Green Bay to increase season-ticket sales. The Saints had to give up a No. 1 draft choice in 1968 for Taylor.

Coach Tom Fears didn't want Taylor because he thought the Hall of Fame fullback was finished. "Jimmy's lost the elasticity in his muscles," Fears would tell me. "We gave up too much for him."

The Saints acquired Paul Hornung from Green Bay in the expansion draft and he was an immediate hit in New Orleans. Hornung was one of the  premier players in the history of the NFL in the 1960s and Vince Lombardi placed him on the expansion list because he felt he would never play again because of a neck injury. The doctors told Hornung he could become paralyzed if he ever played again. He was a great guy to be around. He was like a magnet for having fun and all the ladies loved him, young and old.

All the players and media partied at the Kona Kai Club nightly. To say they had fun at night was an understatement. Hornung even got married at the Kona Kai Club one morning and somebody asked him why he was getting married at 9 o'clock in the morning?

"If doesn't work out, I don’t want to blow the whole day," laughed Hornung.

The 1957 Saints were pieced together mostly by the NFL expansion draft and the picking were slim for Fears and his personnel detectives.

There were just a few good players that came out of that expansion draft, but most of those veterans they selected were either injured, playing the last year or two of their careers or they just weren't very good. Billy Kilmer was a good quarterback. Cornerback Davey Whitsell made the Pro Bowl that year because every team had to have at least one player in the game. Offensive guard Jake Kupp and defensive tackle Mike Tillman turned out to be good players.

Two of three guys the Saints selected never showed up in San Diego, electing to retire rather than report to an expansion team. One player they selected, Willie Walker, decided to join the military instead. When you joined the military in 1967, you had a pretty good chance of going to Vietnam.

Fears had no faith in director of personnel Vic Schwenk. They hated each other. Fears had been an All-American at UCLA while Schwenk was an average player in the background.

Fears said his first-round draft choice, fullback Les Kelley of Alabama, didn't have the running skills or field vision to play in the league and they moved him to linebacker. The Saints' draft choice, Bo Burris of Houston, who was a quarterback in college, wasn't going to cut it as a safety, said the coach, Fears also noted that Burris often fell asleep in the film room.

Fears said Gary Cuozzo, obtained in a trade from Baltimore in a trade for the No. 1 pick in the entire 1967 draft. The Colts used that pick to draft defensive end Bubba Smith, who became an All-Pro and an actor.  Fears said Cuozzo could throw, but that he was a statue in the pocket and that he didn't have the take-charge leadership he was looking for.

The Saints went 5-1 in that preseason and the fans were excited.

The coaches and players told the media not to fall for what they had seen in preseason because other teams were not playing their best players.

Then on the first play in the history the Saints, John Gilliam ran the kickoff back 94 yards for a touchdown against the Rams in old Tulane Stadium. I have never heard a stadium erupt like it did for Gilliam's run. The noise level in the stadium was off the charts. I turned my head after Gilliam threw the ball in the stands and saw commissioner Pete Rozelle, the most powerful man in sports, cheering the kickoff return. And, then I saw him wipe a tear away from his cheek.

Mecom, now 69, lives in Houston where he is in the family oil business and looks over  real estate holdings.. "Everybody was happy back then," said Mecom. " It was a helluva courtship between the city and the team. I caught hell when we lost and you'd thought you'd just won the presidential election when we won.

"In those days, if the league suggested something strongly, you really had to follow through with it. We inherited a lot of mediocrity. The league back then was famous for passing mediocrity around, and we made them less than mediocre.

"In other cities, people become alumnus of their college. Most of the people in New Orleans became the alumnus of the Saints. It was their team."

It hasn't changed much in 42 years.

SOME HITHER, OTHERS YON: Willie Roaf, arguably the best player in Saints history, will  be formally inducted into the Saints Hall of Fame on Friday, Sept. 26, at noon at the Landmark Hotel in Metairie. Roaf is almost a shoo-in for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Roaf, who played nine seasons with the Saints from 1993-2001, was named All-Pro (first or second team) seven times and played in seven Pro Bowls as a Saint. He was named to to the NFL's All-Decade Team in 2000. Barra Bircher will receive the Joe Gemelli Fleur de Lis award, symbolic of supporting the Saints. Bircher spent 36 years working for the Saints as entertainment director, program advertising director, coordinator of donor requests, travel director and director of marketing. Tickets to the luncheon are $400 per table of 10 or $40 per person. The annual All Saints Night Gala is Saturday, Sept. 27, from 6 til 10 at the Rivertown Exhibition Hall in Kenner. It willfeture 20 restaurants, Saints alumni, coach Sean Payton and ex coach  Jim Mora and door prizes. All proceeds from the events will go to the non-pofit Saints Hall of Fame Museum, now located at Gate B of the Superdome. It's opne by appointment for $5 per person by calling (504) 450-9893. For info go to NewOrleansSaints.com...I don't mind the NBC delayed replays of the Olympics, but the other night I was watching swimming and the winner was Mark Spitz...

Chris Henry's return to the Bengals is the call of owner Mike Brown, not head coach Marvin Lewis. Has Lewis lost control of the locker room? "I don't think so," said Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer. "The head coaches don't run the teams in the NFL. The organizations run the teams. Whether it was Marvin's decision, he's still our coach. We still listen to him as he goes."...Every day it's looking more and more like sophomore Andrew Hatch will be LSU's starting quarterback when the Tigers open against Appalachian State in Tiger Stadium on Aug. 30. Hatch started the Tigers' last three scrimmages. Jarrett Lee was held out of Tuesday's scrimmage because of minor injuries. Les Miles likes the way trued freshman Jordan Jefferson is playing. "I liked the freshman quarterback," said Miles after the scrimmage. "He continues to get better. continues to compete, and that's awfully important as you go forward. If he continues to progress, he's a guy that we can actually look to play at times." Jefferson completed 16 of 30 passes for 150 yards and two touchdowns in he scrimmage. Miles said Keiland Williams and Charles Scott "ran the ball well and both had pretty good days" at tailback...My time is up. Ed Staton can be reached at edcoachstaton@yahoo.com.