Jim Bradshaw: New Orleans fans endure 60 years of Saints suffering

The beginning of training camp July 29 opened the 60th season for the New Orleans Saints, and I have suffered through all of them.      
True to Louisiana tradition, the Saints were born in 1966 from a political deal. The National Football League needed congressional approval to merge with the American Football League that year, and a key committee was chaired by Hale Boggs.
He represented New Orleans, which had been trying to get an NFL team for years, and quietly told NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle that it would be a lot easier to get the merger if New Orleans got a team.
Rozelle announced on All Saints Day 1966 that New Orleans would get an expansion team.
Houston oilman John Mecom Jr. was the major stockholder and picked the team’s colors because he’d made his millions from “black gold.”
Head coach Tom Fears helped select 42 players from lists provided by other teams in an expansion draft on February 9, 1967.
The other teams protected their best players, but the Saints were able to grab Paul Hornung and Jim Taylor, who had been a superstars for the Green Bay Packers but were past their prime.
Hornung promptly retired and never played a game for the Saints.
Taylor, a Baton Rouge native and All-American at LSU, and scrambling quarterback Billy Kilmer led what purported to be an offense.
The team got off to an auspicious start, winning five of its six preseason games, and the crowd filling the old Tulane Stadium had brief hopes of a glory-filled season when on the first play of the first regular season game John Gilliam ran the opening kickoff 94 yards for a touchdown.
But high hopes and high fives vanished when the Saints went on to lose to the Los Angeles Rams 27-13 and then kept losing. 
The first-ever regular season win came in the eighth game, when the smallest player in the league, Walt “The Flea” Roberts starred in a 31–24 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles.
Fans had a worrisome flashback to the first game after Roberts ran 81 yards with the opening kickoff for the first of his three touchdowns, but the Saints held on this time and later beat Atlanta and Washington to finish with three wins and eleven losses in that first season.
Things didn’t get much better over the next twenty years. The Saints had winning seasons in only two of those years, 1979 and 1983, and despite some winning seasons in recent years still have more losses (480) than wins (417).
There were a few good moments. Everyone remembers where they were on Nov. 8, 1970, when Tom Dempsey kicked a record-breaking 63-yard field goal in the final seconds of the game to beat the Detroit Lions 19–17.
In the 1971 season opener against the Rams, temperatures on the field reached 130 degrees because new Astroturf held the heat in Tulane Stadium. 
The heavily favored Rams wilted and Archie Manning, playing his first game as a Saint, ran a one-yard quarterback sneak on the last play of the game to win 24–20. Four weeks later, Manning engineered a 24–14 upset over the Dallas Cowboys, who went on to beat Miami in that year’s Super Bowl.
But there were more bad moments than good. The team justly acquired a reputation as one of the most inept in the NFL and in 1980, when they lost their first 14 games, New Orleans sportscaster Buddy Diliberto advised Saints fans to wear paper bags over their heads.
Fans prayed for a turnaround in 1986, when Tom Benson bought the team and hired Jim Mora as head coach. 
Mora led the Saints to their first playoff berth in 1987, their 21st season. 
He got the team to the playoffs three more times but did not win a single postseason game. Jim Haslett coached the team to its first playoff win in 2000. Then came another 3-13 season.
Sean Payton and Drew Brees came to New Orleans in 2006 as the city was rebuilding from Katrina, and the team was trying to rebuild from another losing season.
They miraculously delivered on a promise to do something about both.
On Feb. 7, 2010, the underdog Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV, bringing a welcome distraction to the city and hope for the franchise.
Fortunately, there have been no hugely destructive winds in New Orleans since then, but also no more Super Bowl wins. Please don’t tell me that winning Super Bowls depends on damaging hurricanes.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.