Carmen K. Sisson

“The Saints – they’re like wayward sons,” Mrs. Wood said. “They don’t do the right thing sometimes, but you keep giving them money and keep supporting them. Finally it paid off. It’s like the prodigal son finally came home.”

Still, it may be a long time before the city comes down from this high. As one reveler was heard saying in the French Quarter Sunday night: “Work? There’s no work tomorrow. It’s All Saint’s Day!”

Delays are common, but this may be the first time a football game has pre-empted a trial, says Scott Vowell, presiding judge of the 10th Judicial Circuit for Jefferson County in Alabama. Of course, he’s heard a myriad of other excuses over the years. Funerals. Illnesses. The dog ate my briefcase. The best was the time an attorney asked for a delay so he could join an evangelical rock band and a troupe of Russian ballerinas on a tour of England.

Underestimate the Alabama School for the Deaf (ASD) if you want. They like it that way. You won’t know what hit you until you’re facedown in the turf, inhaling the scent of fresh-mown grass and Alabama soil, staring at the final scoreboard, which illuminates your flawed logic. ASD, billed as “home of the champions” and winner of four national football titles against hearing and non-hearing teams, is one of only 30 deaf high schools in the US playing 11-man football. The team shows up ready to compete.

It’s a tough crowd, this assembly of silver-haired Southern gentry. But David Pollick surveys his audience coolly, flashes a megawatt smile, and says something you might not expect to a room full of well-heeled college alums: “Anyone who would aspire to be a college president is a lunatic.” No doubt some have wondered about the sanity of Dr. Pollick, the 12th president of Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), who arrived at the school in 2004. Last year, he and the board of trustees decided sports had become too prominent at the private liberal arts college – a controversial stance in a state where people still revere Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, even though he died nearly a quarter century ago.

Friday night’s game allows residents a chance to get away, but no one forgets. Approximately 236 people died in Mississippi, 95 in Harrison County. Seventeen of those people were pulled from the muddy waters of this field, where the Pirates are now battling Poplarville. Rather than being sacrilegious, it seems appropriate – football is a fiercely loved pastime here, and there’s never been a better place to be, even before Katrina made the Pirates the only show in town.

Contrails of sweat arc through the air as a football player slams his opponent into the wall, the momentum carrying him over the four-foot barrier and nearly into the nacho-laden laps of a family of four. Fans leap to their feet and pump their fists to a chorus of “Who let the dogs out? Woof! Woof!” With a triumphant grin, the airborne player vaults over the wall and plants his feet firmly back on the green Astroturf as a parade of silver-clad women shimmies into the end zone. Football is the main event on this Friday night, though religion is a definite subtext – with a Bible giveaway, a Christian concert, and, controversially, football players wearing jerseys with biblical references.