While many hailed the Saints upset victory over the Panthers on Sunday as an important and meaningful moment for citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, not everyone was buoyed by the win.

            David Boudreau, a displaced New Orleans resident who says he is not much of a football fan, said he is still pretty upset about the total destruction of his home and the death of his wife and three children despite the dramatic last-minute win by the Saints.

            “I don’t mean to be a party pooper, but I couldn’t give a f-ck about what the Saints do,” said Boudreau. “And I think it’s extremely obtuse and insensitive for anyone to suggest that I, or anyone else, would. Guess what? I’m not a Saints fan, and I couldn’t give a crap about sports. So whether the Saints go 16-0 or 0-16, it doesn’t change the fact that my life is ruined.”

            Boudreau, like tens of thousands of others in the region, lost pretty much everything in the storm – his family, his home, his job, everything. And while he claims to hold out hope that better days are ahead, he said he is crushed by an overwhelming feeling of loss, sadness, anger and depression.

            “Even people I know who are Saints fans didn’t really care much that they won,” he said. “I was standing in quarter-mile line to get a Red Cross debit card on Sunday afternoon when somebody announced that the Saints won, and this one guy in front of me who had said he was a diehard season ticket holder smiled for a second or two, but then was like: ‘Whoopdie-do. I still don’t have a house.’”

            Boudreau said he thinks the media’s coverage of the Saints victory and implication that it would heighten the spirits of those in the Gulf Coast was ignorant and disrespectful.

            “They wanted to make a dramatic story out of something and perhaps even make sports seem more important than they really are,” said Boudreau. “But what should I think – if the Saints had lost I would somehow feel worse than I do already about everything? Let me tell you – you can’t feel worse than this, just as a meaningless football game can’t make you feel better. I’m sure the win was a boost for the Saints players, since many of them have been impacted personally by the hurricane, but for people who don’t care about football, like me – uh, not so much. And screw anyone who says that it should.”

            No matter if the Saints keep winning or losing, Boudreau says there’s really only one thing he can think of that would make him feel even remotely better.

            “If somebody can offer me an explanation as to why it took three days to get any relief to those of us who were stranded here, then yeah – I’ll maybe feel a teensy bit better,” he said. “But I doubt that’s going to happen. So best of luck to the Saints and everything, but I’m a bit more concerned about trying to recover some semblance of a life that’s worth living.”