Football energizes storm-beleaguered New Orleans

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees leaves the room after taking part in media day for the NFL's Super Bowl XLIV football game in Miami, February 2, 2010.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Henry Irvin lives alone -- very alone -- on a deserted city block in the hurricane-hit section of New Orleans known as the Lower Ninth Ward. But he has finally found something to make him feel part of his community: an inspirational football team called the Saints.

The New Orleans Saints, who make their first-ever Super Bowl appearance on Sunday in Miami, offer a shot at spiritual redemption to a city that has struggled for 4-1/2 years to recover from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. The powerful storm flooded 80 percent of New Orleans and killed 1,500 people when it came ashore on August 29, 2005.

For Irvin, the Saints provide uplift and sustenance until he recovers what he really wants -- his neighbors.

"I'm glad we finally put together a team that can represent the community this way," said Irvin, 71, who lives in an otherwise uninhabited city block in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. "It just shows you how a community can be revitalized by a football team."

The Super Bowl is the championship game of the National Football League and is a massive annual cultural event in the United States. The Saints, formed in 1967, for decades were one of the worst teams in the NFL, sometimes derisively called "The Aint's." But they have now emerged as a high-scoring football powerhouse.

New Orleans' problems are numerous. It has the highest murder rate in the United States. Some of its neighborhoods are still unfit for habitation due to flood damage. And its system of levees and flood walls -- protecting a city with large areas situated below sea level -- is vulnerable to a repeat of Katrina's catastrophic flooding.

"Saints mania is very exciting but sports can be an opiate for the masses," said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University in Houston and a former New Orleans resident. "You can't build a sustainable urban community on football wins."

Thousands of former city residents cannot return to homes that remain in ruins, and Louisiana loses the equivalent of two football fields a day of land due to unchecked coastal erosion, Brinkley said.

'SAINTS SALVE'

Others see in the Saints a powerful up-from-the-ashes story that can shake the city out of its post-Katrina funk.

"I see it as 'Saints salve,'" said Charles Figley, a professor and trauma expert at Tulane University in New Orleans. "It's a reprieve, a chance to take some time off and smile, and think of a new future."

It is difficult for a visitor to spot Katrina's mark in the tourist-friendly French Quarter, or at the Louisiana Superdome -- the covered sports stadium where desperate local residents sought shelter during Katrina.

The Superdome -- now refurbished with a new metal skin -- is where the Saints defeated the Minnesota Vikings on January 24 in a dramatic overtime game to earn the right to play the Indianapolis Colts in the Super Bowl.

But some residents, Irving included, would rather see the return of their long-lost neighbors than the glitzy made-for-television extravaganza of the Super Bowl.

Irvin's neighborhood, predominantly poor and black, was one of the hardest-hit by deadly flooding unleashed by Katrina. Its wounds still show.

Despite promises from the U.S. government to help rebuild the city, the Lower Ninth Ward, once home to 14,000 people, is dark at night because street lights are still unrepaired. There is no local grocery store or high school.

Irvin is a Saints fan, like just about everybody else in New Orleans. But if he had the choice between seeing the Saints win the Super Bowl and getting his neighbors back, he would not think twice. "I'd take my neighbors," he said. "What the Saints have accomplished so far is wonderful, and we hope it can continue, but the neighbors -- they would be here for good."

(Editing by Chris Baltimore and Will Dunham)