Countdown to kickoff – 10 hours, 45 minutes at the time of writing. Saints fans marked tonight’s game against the Patriots on their schedules at the beginning of the season, and as they kept winning, the game’s significance grew. On the drive to work, I saw a number of people off to work in black and gold, and the tailgate lot across Loyola from the post office is already over half-full. Who Dat traffic is heavy on Facebook and Twitter (Gotta love Tony Scratchere, who’s already repping like it’s game time. At 7:28, he tweeted, “Alright people. Enough sleep! Let’s start tailgating right now!!!”).

On the weekend, I saw a tweet from Reggie Bush: “Hey reminding everyone to wear all black to the Saints game this Monday Night!!!! Blackout!!!” I wonder how much of a restriction 140 characters really is when Scratchere and Bush have space left over for superfluous exclamation points, but that aside, the call is out to get back in black. If that leads to another sick, acrobatic Bush touchdown, it will be well worth it. And slimming.