A man claiming to be from the year 3025 appeared outside the Caesars Superdome this morning, standing silently beneath a flickering streetlight and holding a glowing sign that read:
“If you want civilization to survive, turn off the games.”
Witnesses say he spoke in a calm, measured tone, as though explaining something terrible yet inevitable.
“You must stop watching,” he told the gathering crowd. “For fifteen years, neither team will win. Not a championship. Not a title. Not even your faith back. Use that time. Reclaim it. You cannot imagine what will happen if you do.”
When questioned, the man smiled, almost relieved to share it, and said, “This is where the turnaround began, when New Orleanians finally looked at the Saints and Pelicans and said, ‘We can do better than this.’ The moment people stopped wasting their lives on lost causes and started building a future worth watching.”
He went on to say he had seen two futures: one where fans kept watching and one where they didn’t. In the first, humanity collapsed into a sluggish haze of disappointment and concession speeches. In the second, the one he came from, people turned their attention elsewhere and built a civilization so enlightened it barely remembered what a third-quarter collapse felt like.
“I know you love your teams — it’s apparent, all the historians have documented it,” he said. “It’s just that when the people leading them stop giving you the love you need to stay sane, you have to make a choice. Keep hoping for change, or actually create it yourself. New Orleanians are powerful when they work together, especially once they stop acting like the kids of politicians.”
He explained that once New Orleanians began using their newfound time for innovation, creativity, and growth, the city started to evolve. Over the course of those fifteen years, what began as quiet self-improvement became a movement. Freed from the emotional drain of watching losing seasons, people focused on brilliance instead of box scores, turning New Orleans into the 21st century’s model of urban perfection in everything from infrastructure to education to public transit that actually arrived on time. The transformation caught the attention of the nation, then the world, and the city’s blueprint for better living sparked what would later be called The New Renaissance.
The traveler described a future so advanced it bordered on myth, cities that float, diseases forgotten, peace that lasted longer than a Pelicans lead. But he claimed none of it happened until people made one crucial decision: to walk away from mediocrity disguised as loyalty.
Pat Myaz, Neutral Ground News Artist’s rendering based on a witness’s description of how the time traveler described what New Orleans would look like in the year 3025. (Artist: Pat Myaz)
“When New Orleans fans turned off their televisions,” he said, “they turned on the lights of a new world. They read, they built, they thought. They stopped waiting for miracle seasons and started making actual ones.”
He insisted that this small act, the refusal to keep caring about teams that refused to care back, was the hinge of history. That every cure, every innovation, every step toward utopia began with that moment of collective sanity.
He added that it also forced the franchises themselves to change, terrified by the power dynamic that had shifted. Seeing what New Orleanians could accomplish without them, they were finally compelled to build the kind of present and future the people deserved.
As he spoke, he reportedly shook his head at the “leadership” of both franchises, noting how they continued to charge premium prices for substandard results with “a confidence only failure could earn.” But it was all necessary to advance.
“Your teams will not rise… not for a while, at least,” he warned. “But you will.”
As police officers approached, the traveler vanished in a quiet burst of light, leaving behind only the echo of his message and a faint hum in the air, like the city itself holding its breath.
No one knows yet if New Orleans will heed the call. The Saints continue to stumble. The Pelicans remain historically consistent in their failures. The city stands at a crossroads between habit and hope, between the comfort of watching loss and the challenge of doing something better with a Sunday afternoon.
Historians from the future, if they still exist, will one day record what happened next. For now, fans are left with a choice that could alter the course of human civilization: Watch the games. Or save the world.