Super Bowl Raffle Dangles Big Fun in the Big Easy

Related Media

Jim Henderson, left, a 1968 SUNY Cortland graduate, called New Orleans Saints games on the radio alongside Archie Manning from 1986 to 1998.

CORTLAND, NY (12/14/2012)(readMedia)-- A long, lingering kiss on the lips of excess.

Those are the borrowed words that SUNY Cortland Distinguished Alumnus Jim Henderson '68, the radio play-by-play voice for the NFL's New Orleans Saints, uses to describe the Big Easy, a centerfold of a city that has perfected its most common associations, whether crawfish broil or jazz festival or Bourbon Street parade.

"This is a city of excesses - drinking, dining, passion, parties," said Henderson, a former English major who moved to the Bayou in 1978 and became its preeminent sportscaster over the next three-plus decades. "There's never a dull moment, for better or for worse."

The 13-time winner of the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association's Sportscaster of the Year Award has traveled to Augusta, Ga., to cover the Masters and to countless other cities to report on sports such as baseball and boxing. For 12 years, he called Saints games in the broadcast booth alongside Archie Manning, father to Peyton and Eli.

He's worked nearly two dozen Super Bowls - yes, he was there for Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction - and he's been around long enough to witness professional football's biggest game mushroom into a weeklong spectacle.

Henderson, as one might imagine, has come across many sports-related truths during his career. So believe him when he says no one does Super Bowls quite like New Orleans.

The city's Mercedes-Benz Superdome plays host to Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3. And as it happens, SUNY Cortland is raffling an expenses-paid trip worth $4,400 to the game.

Only 500 tickets will be sold at $100 apiece for the Dec. 21 drawing with all of the proceeds going to SUNY Cortland students in the form of undergraduate scholarships, graduate assistantships and student programs.

That means the odds of winning - guaranteed to be no greater than 500 to 1 - are closer to catching Mardi Gras beads than taking home the Mega Millions jackpot.

"If you poll anonymously the press corps that covers the Super Bowl year in and year out and you asked them for one place that should host the game every year, I think 99 percent of them would say New Orleans for a number of reasons," Henderson said.

First and foremost, it's the warmth of the city's residents.

"People are genuinely outgoing, solicitous of people coming here to visit, appreciative of the fact that they help the economy so much," Henderson said. "I think people are very proud of New Orleans and its eccentricities and are anxious to show them to the rest of the world."

That Southern hospitality isn't lost on Henderson, who keeps an apartment across Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville, La., and a permanent residence in Poplarville, Miss., with his wife, Carol Reed Henderson '69. He's offered to chat with the College's Super Bowl raffle winner and provide insider advice for the trip.

"They need to go to Archie's restaurant," he said, referring to Manning's, a football-themed restaurant located on Fulton Street not far from the city's French Quarter. "That will probably be the biggest gathering point for the media and fans of any place I could tell you in New Orleans."

Then there are the mansions to see in the Garden District, the alligator farms to visit in the Bayou District and the mile-long list of cajun cuisine to try.

And set aside time to fish, Henderson suggests. There's a reason people refer to Louisiana as a sportsman's paradise.

Regardless of a tourist's interests, New Orleans earns high marks for the proximity of its major attractions to the excitement of the big game.

"When people come here, you really get a sense of the Super Bowl being in the city," Henderson said. "And as a host city for the Super Bowl, believe me there's none better."

He pauses, however, to offer a bit of a disclaimer: a New Orleans experience is likely to leave its impression.

"I've always said that New Orleans isn't going to change for you; you're going to have to change for it," said Henderson, who claims he went for a job interview and a weekend of legendary cuisine and never thought about leaving. "Certainly, if you're a tourist and you're only here for a weekend or a week, you don't have to substantially change who or what you are.

"But once you stay here for a while, you recognize the eccentricities that are unlike any other place in the country and they'll either drive you crazy or you'll never want to leave.

"You know you'll never experience anything else like New Orleans."

To purchase a raffle ticket, send payment - by cash or check only - and a completed entry form to Sheila Morse, SUNY Cortland, P.O. Box 2000, Cortland, NY 13045, with checks made payable to Cortland College Foundation, Inc.

Entry forms can be obtained at http://www2.cortland.edu/information/jets/super-bowl-ticket-raffle.dot.

-30-