Don’t come looking to me for tickets

Stephen Pate, operations manager for New Orleans Saints

All the razz-a-ma-tazz and hoopla is over for this year’s Super Bowl. Now that the New Orleans Saints won, I can finally tell you about one of my cousins normally who wouldn’t be in the limelight.

Yes that’s right, my cousin Stephen Pate. Not the golfer, although he is doing well winning in Bogota as the oldest professional golfer to win a tournament at 48.

He’s not the millionaire horse-thief who squires TV star Nicolette Sheridan. (My aunt is going to kill me for the ‘horse-thief’ crack.)

Not the motorcycle mechanic who was with Jay Leno last fall in LA.

Not the Baptist preacher, nor the Houston lawyer nor the one in Tennessee.

He’s not a UNIX programming whiz. He’s only a distant relative of Steve Pate over in China.

He’s not even close to my cousin Jim Pate, one of the few ethical politicians out in Arizona or anywhere. 

This cousin Stephen Pate is the Operations Manager for the New Orleans Saints.

I’m not going to talk about whether they are the losing-est team in the league, which they’re not. They are simply the Super Bowl champs for 2010.

Stephen doesn’t get out on the field much, except when the fans are all gone. But he’s the man who makes it all happen. Makes the toilets flush, the beer flow at the concessions and the lights go on.

Stephen is a math wiz they tell me, well my aunt in Crescent City says he is. He keeps the whole ball team rolling and under budget. Even when New Orleans was under water, the team wasn’t.

If you’re down in New Orleans, partying at the Mardi Gras don’t worry about looking Stephen up and saying hello. He’s real busy.

I just text my aunt and she gets in touch with him when I need tickets.