Saints changing 'unhistory'

The New Orleans Saints are going to the Super Bowl. ... And now anything is possible.

Dogs will fly.

Hell will freeze over.

Wait a minute, Robinson, didn't you write this column last year?! Yes, I did — when the Arizona Cardinals were headed to the Super Bowl.

What is going on? First, the Cardinals, now the Saints? Who knew the Super Bowl was a segment for World's Biggest Losers? Who's next, the Detroit Lions?

OK, Robinson, let's not get carried away. If you can't count on the Saints to lose, what can you count on? Anything can happen now.

If the Saints can get to the Super Bowl, then Barry Bonds can tell the truth and nothing but the truth, David Caruso can learn to act, Tiger can win her back, Dick Cheney can become a comedian, Pres. Obama can lose the teleprompter.

Brett Favre can retire, Congress can give itself a pay cut and pay off the deficit, Terrell Owens can make nice with his former quarterbacks, the Chicago Cubs can win the World Series.

The Saints weren't supposed to get this far, and it wouldn't have if the football gods hadn't intervened and dropped five turnovers into their laps in the conference championship game and ruined a perfectly good Brett Favre story.

These Saints have done what Archie Manning, Bobby Hebert, Earl Campbell, George Rodgers, Mike Ditka, Paul Hornung and the rest of them couldn't do: Put the downtrodden franchise in the world championship game and end a history of futility.

Know who was the first to wear bags over their heads during games as a sign of their embarrassment? Saints fans. After watching the Saints lose their first 14 games in 1980, local sportscaster "Buddy D" Diliberto advised Saints supporters to wear the paper bags over their heads at the team's home games. After that, it became a custom in American sports for the fans of losing teams to wear bags over their heads.

Saints fans endured, but a sense of humor helped. They called their team the "Aints."

Even the team's birth was a shaky proposition, something that sounds as if it were arranged in a dark, smoke-filled back room off the French Quarter. The NFL needed U.S. Senate approval to merge with the AFL. Hale Boggs, the Senate Majority Whip from Louisiana, struck a deal: He would support the merger if the NFL gave New Orleans a franchise.

The rest is un-history, as they say.