Liberty and Justice for All!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Talk about wishful thinking. If what that guy is taking is not illegal, it should be!

Now seriously, the discussion of Reggie Bush and what the Saints should do with his 20 million dollar salary over the next two years has been a hot topic on the sports discussion. People are saying that we should trade Bush away because he is not worth the 8 million he would get paid next year.

So let me get this straight. People think Reggie Bush is not worth the contract he is owed. If that is the case, how on earth are the Saints supposed to trade for him? Who else would take him for 8 million dollars? It would be like me telling you “my house is worth $150,000 but I need you to buy it from me for $200,000 because that is how much I owe”. And even if we did give some prospective team some cash (say $2 Million) as an incentive to take the contract, we would still be paying $2 million more than we should for whatever running back we would replace him with.

Besides, his measurable statistics might not be worth $8 million but those things that he does that cannot be measured on a stat line are why I think it would be worth it to pay him the money he is owed. However, I think that if we were to offer him a renegotiated long term contract (perhaps $6 million a year for 6 years) I think we could lock in his talent up for a while.

I liked Reggie Bush even when he would try and run sideways because of those things that cannot be measured. I like him even more now that he is running north-south and running over people.

I also would like to be able to keep my Bush jersey!

Tonight was a wonderful parade to celebrate the amazing season of the New Orleans Saints. This was unlike any Mardi Gras parade I have ever attended. It was packed wall to wall but there was no real jockeying for position (at least where I sat). We all crammed in, talked about the season and how great it is to have such upstanding men playing for our city. We cheered with joy at those former Saints riding on floats (including Mike McKenzie and Michael “the Beer Man” Lewis). As we waited for floats we cheered Saints cheers and just had a good time.

Now, I have no clue who planned the parade route. However, the planning doesn’t seem to have taken a lot of thought. Estimates on the radio had the number of people attending the parade at 800,000. This is 800,000 people who watched a parade that had most of its route surrounded by Loyola, Canal, the River, and the Pontchartrain Expressway. No uptown or mid-city portions.

Think about it. How many routes did traffic have to get out of the area? And how many more people were in the area because of how compact the route was? When I watch Bacchus, I typically watch it from around Lucy’s. I will go park in the Harrah’s parking garage and even with the fact that it exits out onto Convention Center Blvd, it usually takes me no more than 30 minutes to get out of the garage. Why is it so easy to get out? Because many of the people have watched it in other parts of the city.

I left my wife in a parking garage downtown at about 8:20pm, and then walked to my car (that I had parked outside of the parade route before work). She just got out at 11:20pm. Ignoring the ineptitude of the building/parking management for a second, the fact that people were compacted in such a small area meant that getting out of garages would take much longer than usual.

Back to the ineptitude of the management. There was nobody outside of the building directing traffic. As cars tried to come out of the building, they could not make any progress because nobody was there to make sure that cars could flow out of the garage at a steady (even if slow) rate. It was not just the parking garage my wife parked in that was a problem. Listening to WWL on the way back downtown to see if I could just come get my wife and have them leave the car overnight in the garage, I heard many horror stories of people who could not get out of their garages either. One garage allegedly had an SDT garbage truck blocking the exit. Other garages just could not move. By the time I made it back from the West Bank to the CBD, I saw other garages still letting their customers out (at this time 2 hours later). You would think that they would have been able handle a very simple idea of hiring people to direct traffic out of your building. By the time I got downtown, their car was moving and I was not needed. I was still able to make it back home before they got out of the garage.

Hopefully, the next time we win the Superbowl, we will have learned our lesson. However, I wouldn’t think that a city that is so adept at throwing a parade would be so inept about making a smart route.

What a great game. The Saints played well on all sides of the ball and our boys in black and gold showed the world why we should have never been considered underdogs. Brees was awesome,Vilma was brilliant, Hartley was dependable, Morestead was clutch, and apparently Porter broke Twitter.

But this whole season was an amazing one. The Saints have broken many records this season, some Saints firsts and others NFL firsts. Enough cannot be said about Sean Payton dipping into his own wallet to make sure Greg Williams would be our Defensive Coach.

It was really nice to watch, after the fact, the replay of all the pundits and players who picked the Colts to win. Makes you wonder why they get paid so much.

Those same pundits are saying how this loss really hurts Peyton Manning’s legacy. Just as they exaggerated the Saints likelihood of losing, I think they are exaggerating what this game does to his career. He is still a great QB and I cannot take anything away from him. Tracy Porter, on the other hand…

SAINTS WIN THE SUPERBOWL!

(And by the amount I predicted as well, I might add)

As my wife says… WHO DAT BITCHES?!?!?!?!?!