Big Easy a big winner in the USAFL shuffle
By "Donny LaCroix"

Off-Season 2160 (New Orleans) - It took 150 years and a few nuclear meltdowns, but the Saints have finally returned home. Let the party begin.

Fans swarmed the sprawling Archon Communications Sports Complex today as the first official team AirBuses arrived. While off-season workouts are still several weeks off, nearly the entire roster was on hand to greet the fans- many of whom would leave you believing that the team had only left for a short holiday, rather than being one relocated from another city. And against the backdrop of the massive- and newly 're-'christened- Superdome, itself gleaming under dozens of coats of recently applied black and gold lacquer, the notion seems hardly farfetched.

Of course, few followers of the sports world are unaware of the extensive machinations that resulted in the strange reshuffling that occurred in one of the world's largest sporting leagues. Ironically, as many have noted, the near meltdown of the nuclear power station in nearby Pearl River, just 50 miles from New Orleans, is considered to have begun the domino effect leading to the team's arrival. But the fans here will happily explain that anything from destiny to Voodoo lent a certain air of inevitability to the proceedings.

The meltdown, the first of seven over a four-year period in plants administered by Energy Systems Solutions, started a slow collapse of the energy giant's stock values. The subsequent loss of federal contracts to oversee the management of tidal power generation stations throughout the Gulf region left the company in a precarious financial situation; the resulting bidding war for the many assets the corporation selected to liquidate left majority ownership of the Washington Redskins in doubt. Fears that a sale of the team to interested parties outside the U.S. borders would result in an attempt to move the team beyond them led to federal injunctions preventing its sale to such parties; the rise of Archon Communications through the ranks of bidders seemed unlikely, but a rapidly growing local coalition was able to bolster the telecommunication company's bid sufficiently to secure ownership of the franchise.

Attempts to keep the team in the nation's capital ultimately fell short, though the void they left behind was quickly filled by the uprooted Cincinnati team (which, in a move that shocked many, was similarly replaced by the league's Charlotte franchise). While sports pundits were left reeling, the Saints' new ownership and suddenly restored fanbase exploded into action. Amid citizen uproar, permits to expand Archon's sports complex were granted in record time. Entire avenues were emptied, then erased to make room for construction of the largest indoor stadium ever conceived. As locals will tell you, while construction on the massive structure- reportedly capable of seating over half a million fans- was finished over two months ago, it was only last week that the finishing touch to the building would be made: the removal of the 'Archon Communications Dome' signage, replaced by what most consider to be the 'traditional' tag belonging to a venue built nearly two centuries ago- 'Louisiana Superdome'.

While analysts will point to shifting viewer markets, sound investment practices, political jockeying, and good old American corporate chest thumping as reasons behind the franchise settling on New Orleans, all the analysis the media can bring to bear is unlikely to convince the ecstatic sea of fans that assembled over the past few days in the Big Easy. Whether by Divine Providence or prayers of devout fans to Vodoun Loa being answered, the Saints have come marching home.

And if any city knows how to throw a homecoming party, it's New Orleans.