SAINTERNET's genesis

Like most Saints fans, the origin of my team allegiance is a product of geography- I was born in New Orleans (in 1970) and grew up there. Though I'm too young to remember the team's Tulane Stadium years, in the late 1970's and early 1980's I earned battle scars familiar to long-time fans:

In September 1987, I left New Orleans to attend college in Atlanta, which put me 500 miles away from home just as the team was launching its landmark 12-3 campaign. Though I was thrilled about the Saints' newfound success, I was thoroughly frustrated by the dearth of info about the team- television coverage was scant, and the local newspaper offered only box scores and paragraph-long game descriptions.

My Saints info problem went away the following fall, however, when I started my participation in the co-op education program, in which I spent half the year in the New Orleans area, earning money for my education. I became a season ticket holder (section 613, row 13, seat 12); from 1989-1992 I missed only four home games.

In 1993, I left New Orleans once more, to attend graduate school in Austin, Texas. Though I was again 500 miles away from New Orleans, a preseason game vs. the Oilers was serendipitously played in the brand-new Alamodome, in nearby San Antonio. Aiming to get some information to fellow displaced fans (those fans no longer living in the New Orleans metro area), I went to the game and took notes, which I then posted to the Internet, via the rec.sport.football.pro Usenet newsgroup.

The success of that game report led me to put together summaries of the regular season games as well- I went to an Austin sports bar, took notes about each game, and posted a play-by-play online a few hours after the final gun. In 1994 the alt.sports.football.pro.no-saints Usenet newsgroup was launched (not by me). Later that year, I created the first Saints fan website. It didn't acquire the name "SAINTERNET" (the union of "SAINT" & "INTERNET") until 1995, but the URL has never changed-

http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~serpas/saints.html

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