Really? I travel often (Every week) and have yet to see many if any people wearing black and gold Saints merchadise outside of New Orleans that aren't from New Orleans. Saints merchadise only began working their way up the ladder due to two things: Katrina and the Saints being the only thing the city had, and sucess. Before then, when did you see anything but mockery of this franchise. It wasn't until 2009 until we actually reached the top 10, and if Drew Brees left tomorrow, Sean Peyton left because of the bounty deal you could bet your bottom dollar we'd be out of the top 10 within a year.
Your facts are also incorrect in my reasearch, http://www.nola.com/saints/index.ssf...ack_top_1.html , 2009 was the first year we cracked the top 10 (year before the superbowl)
So lets look at the last 5 years superbowl winners:
2012: Giants TBD
2011: Packers #1
2010: Saints #1
2009: Steelers #1
2008: Giants #2
The Saints have only entered the rehlm of the Packers Cowboys and Steelers because they're winning nothing else. Those other three franchises are either a "global" brand or #1 or #2 in all overall superbowl wins. I'm sorry if you think it's foolish to seperate yourself from it, but the Hornets are a team striken by lack of identity; hense the whole purpose of the rebrand, and to tie their identity to someone else would totaly defeat the purpose of the multimillion dollar effort to create a unique identity for this franchise and IMO would be asinine asiten asieleven asitwelve.