In the BCS national championship game, Notre Dame refuses to come out of the locker room giving Alabama the first forfeit national championship in history.

Down here there is still talk of the New Orleans Saints at 5-6 making the playoffs.

San Francisco 49ers win reminded New Orleans Saints of  WereDat’s 

Jim Mora is revered in New Orleans as the head coach who brought the Saints into the realm of respectability, but mentioning his name outside of black-and-gold boundaries elicits a very different response.

In the minds of some around the NFL and perhaps the commissioner Roger Goodell, today’s showdown at the Mercedes Benz Superbowl is a match between the “dirty birds” against the “dirty Saints”.

    The 8-0 Falcons are coming to the Mercedes Benzon Superdome Sunday in a game that could turn the season around or forever doom it for our local heroes.

This past Friday, I lost a friend and a coach.

The next time the New Orleans Saints take the field, they might feel comforted that their opponents will be in gold and green representing the Green Bay Packers and not the black and white stripes representing the replacement referees.

A Channel 6 sports reporter called last night to ask if I would comment on the legacy of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for the 10 pm news.

Jim W. Miller's New Orleans Saints blog column:    

In the halcyon days of seven-day newspapers, I covered an NFL team that was usually out of contention for post-season honors by Thanksgiving.  Sometimes by Halloween. As a practical matter, they were probably out of it by Labor Day, but their legions of loyal fans would not admit it as they went through the motions of masochism. After each loss, the ink-stained wretches of the press would dutifully ask the players about how they could continue to toil through another losing season even as they gave up their sugar plum dreams of post-season play and championship glory. The standard answer, which becomes a cliche to losing teams, is "we are playing for pride."