Home Team by Sean Payton

Author:Sean Payton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA), Inc.
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

18

FAN BASE

AS I WAS GETTING to know New Orleans, something occurred to me about playing here: What the fans wanted most of all was effort and presence.

Wins were nice. Same as in other cities. Winning made everyone feel better, the team and the fans. But the fact that these players and I had chosen to come here when so much was in doubt—that meant an enormous amount to the people in this region—maybe even more than the final score of some game.

This outlook is a rare act of generosity from fans to a team—all but unknown in the world of professional sports. In Boston or Philly or New York—in almost any other major sports market—the fans can love you passionately, exorbitantly, unreservedly. And they will love you as long as you deliver the victories that make them feel good about themselves and their team. But string together a few losses? Blow a few important plays? Employ a strategy that flops? Even the most enthusiastic boosters will turn on you in a flash. That is just the nature of this business.

My job as a coach—and the players’ job as players—is to perform and to achieve victory. We are professionals. We are supposed to have talent. We are paid for our time. And whether it’s football, baseball, basketball or NASCAR, all these sports have concrete ways of measuring how we’ve done. What’s your win-loss record? What’s your batting average, your free-throw percentage, your pass-completion rate? Do you keep crashing your car into the wall? Fans sometimes will briefly tolerate poor personal performances on teams that are winning. “Sometimes” and “briefly” are the key words here. But if a team isn’t winning, do not expect to get very far with pleas of “Honestly, we tried hard.”

But in New Orleans, when we lost, it was nothing like the usual fan-on-coach experience. All we got was support and encouragement. Just the fact that we were open for business meant so much at this time.

We were the home team—their team—and we were home now. These people were so generous and warm and understanding—I’d never experienced anything like that before. I didn’t quite know how to respond.

And when we won, it was off the charts. After home games, I wanted to shake hands with every spectator who’d been cheering us on. And it wasn’t only me. Lots of the players hung around every game accepting congratulations, signing autographs, posing for photos, trading high fives with the fans. The atmosphere in the Dome wasn’t like that of a pro team at all. It was more like college players coming over to the student section after a win—and joining the glee club in a rousing rendition of the school’s fight song.

We were building a fan base, retail.

Slowly, this direct player-fan contact became a Saints ritual. Players would toss their wrist pads into the crowd. I got into the habit of tossing my visor. People just love to collect this stuff, although I’d suggest giving that visor a thorough scrubbing before it goes on anyone else’s head.

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