Saints Go Marching in White House

President Barack Obama extended his sports-filled birthday weekend today with a White House ceremony honoring the New Orleans Saints, last season’s Super Bowl champs.

White House visits by championship sports teams have become commonplace, but this one was special, because of what the Saints have meant to New Orleans’ recovery from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

The president, who played golf on Saturday and then basketball on Sunday with a bunch of NBA legends, said he’s a Chicago Bears fan when it comes to football.

But the Saints’ Super Bowl win “was a big win for the country—not just for New Orleans—because five years ago, this team played its entire season on the road. It didn’t have a home field. The Superdome had been ruined by Hurricane Katrina. The heartbreaking tragedies that unfolded there when it was used as a shelter from that terrible storm lingered all too fresh in a lot of people’s minds.”

“And back then, people didn’t even know if the team was coming back. People didn’t know if the city was coming back. Not only did the team come back—it took its city’s hands and helped its city back on its feet. This team took the hopes and the dreams of a shattered city and placed them squarely on its shoulders.”

“Plenty of cities carry their sports teams through a tough season,” Obama added. “It’s a rare thing when a sports team carries a city through tough times.”

The president also used the occasion to recommit his administration to helping the Gulf Coast recover from the BP oil spill.

“The battle to stop the oil from flowing into the Gulf is just about over,” Obama said. “Our work goes on, though. I made a commitment to the people of the Gulf Coast that I would stand by them not just until the well was closed but until they recovered from the damage that’s been done. And that’s a commitment my administration is going to keep.”

He then put in a plug for Gulf Coast seafood, and noted that he served Gulf shrimp Sunday at a White House barbecue.

Obama’s praise of the Saints’ win “as a big win for the country” could cost him some votes in Indiana, since the Indianapolis Colts were the losers in that game.

But indulging his love of sports is a winner for Obama, particularly when he can use it, as in the Saints’ case, to make a larger point about how an organization’s civic involvement can help rejuvenate a city. The president’s regular guy bona fides are constantly being questioned. Playing basketball, especially when he can hoop it up with LeBron James and Magic Johnson, will earn him more props than hacking around Andrews Air Force Base’s golf course.