Super Bowl XLIV: Will Voodoo, Saints, Bring Trophy Home to New Orleans?

Deep in the bayou, down miles of submerged gators and inlets teaming with crayfish, is a small house sitting well back from the water.

Cypress trees strung with moss partially hide the dwelling of one of Louisiana’s most notorious voodoo priestesses. Her name is not known among the tourist traps, and she doesn’t have her own website.

High Priestess Carissa Dubois doesn’t advertise nor does she seek out customers. People from all over the world come to the backwater to find her for help. Love, revenge, fortune—all and every type of help is asked for. All must be willing to pay the price, and almost all do.

She has no telephone, no television, no fax machine. She has only her religion, her centuries old power that has been passed down to her, generation to generation.

Hours after the New Orleans Saints won the NFC Division championship, three men climbed into a non-descript fishing boat and headed deep into the bayou. Well after midnight when they departed, it was close to dawn when the boat finally slowed and docked at a small pier off of Bayou Boulee’. The men, all carrying bulging sports bags with the Saints logo on the side, walked up the steep path to Priestess Dubois’s house and disappeared inside.

Two hours later, the men departed. They carried nothing with them as they left.

Fast forward to Feb. 4, three days before Super Bowl XLIV.

Inside a room in the small house on the bayou, High Priestess Dubois is busy with the items brought to her by the unknown men. The only furniture in the room is a long table.

Upon the table lies 25 small dolls, all dressed in the uniforms of the Indianapolis Colts. There are the 11 offensive starters and the 11 defensive starters. Included are the placekicker and the punter. Last, a likeness of head coach Jim Caldwell.

All of the dolls contain a likeness of the player they represent. All have the correct jersey number. Each is lined up in the position they represent on the football field. All are riddled with stick pins.

The Dwight Freeney doll has several pins stuck into what would be his right ankle. Pins dot the right legs of the dolls representing punter Pat McAfee and placekicker Matt Stover. The Reggie Wayne doll’s hands and knees are filled with the sharp objects.

The largest doll has number 18 on the front and back of its body. This doll has more pins than all of the other dolls combined. Head, arms, hands, legs, feet, mouth. No part of the doll is immune.

For days, Priestess Dubois has been praying and chanting. She has mixed special potions for ineptitude, and soaked the dolls in the mixture. She has made sacrifices to her Gods. She has drawn upon all the power known to her to enable this powerful spell to come to pass.

The New Orleans Saints—NFC football champions—will win the SUPER BOWL!

(For Super Bowl XLIV, every angle known to mankind has been covered by writers from all over the world. This article is a light-hearted attempt at understanding just how important a victory would be for the people of Louisiana, and especially for the citizens of New Orleans. Of course, this story is a complete fabrication. Isn't it?)