For those long-suffering fans of the New Orleans Saints, Super Bowl Sunday will be the culmination of more than 40 years of wandering in the football wilderness. Finally, after years of frustration, and even ineptness, the Saints are playing for professional football’s grandest prize.

It’s all exciting enough to send the people of New Orleans and Louisiana into a Texas-sized tizzy. But Saints fervor isn’t stopping at the Sabine. It has swamped into Kingwood and the Lake Houston area.

Dave Martin, a member of the Humble ISD school board, is in Miami today for the Super Bowl. He is a New Orleans native, and he has followed the Saints since the team’s inaugural season.

“I was there in 1967 at the Saints first game when John Gilliam ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown. I saw Tom Dempsey’s 63-yard field goal.”

During football season, Martin and his sons frequently head east on I-10 to follow the Saints and the LSU Tigers.

In fact, Martin was in New Orleans for business on Monday. His observation: “I was wondering if anyone was working. People all over town were talking about the Saints. New Orleans – no matter win, lose or draw – will always celebrate.”

So can the Saints actually defeat Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts? “Heck yeah,” Martin said. “What people don’t realize is that when Saints were winning big in the first half of year, everybody was healthy. In the second part of the year, they had a lot of injuries. Now, just about everybody is healthy. But they’ll have to play an almost perfect game to beat the Colts.”

Keith Lapeze, who lives in Fall Creek, is originally from Baton Rouge and is a longtime Saints fan. “It just doesn’t seem real,” Lapeze said about the Saints being in the Super Bowl. “I’ve followed them for a long time and always accepted them as the lovable loser.

“The passion of New Orleans has always been there for the Saints. I’ve talked to family members and friends, and they say the city is going nuts.”

Lapeze said the team’s winning blitz has translated into a feeling of success for New Orleans, a city that has fought back from the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

He will watch the Super Bowl and all of its hype from his home in Fall Creek.

If the Saints are crowned world champions at the end of the day, Martin envisions “a celebration that we have never seen before. It will be a celebration beyond what people have seen at Mardi Gras.”

Paul Schwarz, a Stephen F. Austin State University student who graduated from Kingwood High in 2007, does not want to take any chances on missing such a celebration.

Schwarz, a native of Thibodaux, La., and some of his buddies from SFA are in The Big Easy today. They couldn’t get tickets to the game in Miami, but they plan to be there in spirit. They’ll do so by watching the Super Bowl from – you guessed it – Bourbon Street.

Here’s Schwarz’s prediction about what will happen if the Saints win: “It will be ten times bigger of a party than Mardi Gras.”

And if they lose: “There will still be a celebration because the Saints have never been to the Super Bowl before.”