WDSU has decided today would be an appropriate time for us to remember one of the more embarrassing episodes in Saints history. I can't embed the video, so just click here if you feel like revisiting 1991, the year the city of New Orleans adopted a generic, idiotic Rally's commercial into a sort of rallying cheer for its football team. "Cha-Ching" was either a phenomenon that so lacked originality and imagination that it could have happened anywhere, or was so replete with silly innocent enthusiasm that it could have happened only in New Orleans. Maybe it's both. I don't know. I both love it and hate it. At the time, being an angsty high school student, I despised it.
The WDSU video is of actor Seth Green whose staring role in the commercial was, I guess, part of his launch into show business. You see, Green had been invited to deliver what has to be the only live performance of his "Cha-Ching" routine ever on the floor of the Superdome during halftime of a Sunday Night game against the Falcons. I remember because I was there.
At this point in the 1991 season, the Saints, who had started 7-0, were in the process of badly fading down the stretch. The Seth Green Falcons game would prove to be the second of four consecutive losses that really took the... uh... Ching out of their momentum. The Sunday night game was memorable for Fred McAfee's only 100 yard rushing performance of his 16 year career and a curious play where the Saints faked an injury to starting quarterback Steve Walsh so that backup Mike Buck could enter the game and throw one deep pass that would have been far out of Walsh's range.
The "Cha-Ching" Saints of 1991 backed into their first division title but were ousted from the first round of the playoffs by the same Falcons team that had beaten them in the Seth Green game. If the 2009 Saints win in Miami this weekend to go 6-0, it would be the team's best start since '91. And still there will be plenty of time for things to head downhill from there.
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