The Super Bowl winner won't be the only champion celebrated in New Orleans this week.
On Saturday, the day before the game, a parade takes the streets of The Big Easy. It's scheduled to feature the football teams of Edna Karr, Archbishop Shaw and South Plaquemines High School.
Edna Karr and Archbishop Shaw are in the city, less than a 15-minute drive from Caesars Superdome, home of the New Orleans Saints. South Plaquemines is just over an hour to the southeast.
Together, they account for three of the eight Louisiana state champions from this past season, and they're all located on the "West Bank" of New Orleans — the western side of the Mississippi River, which cuts through the city and surrounding parishes.
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"The guys on the East Bank used to say, ‘On the West Bank, the water is different,'" Archbishop Shaw coach Hank Tierney told FOX Sports.
In New Orleans, host of Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, pride in location shapes the rich and unique football tradition of the city, a hotbed for NFL talent. The Mannings are royalty. Other former and current NFL stars like Ja'Marr Chase, Odell Beckham Jr., Tyrann Mathieu, Ryan Clark, Reggie Wayne and Patrick Surtain Sr. have called the Crescent City home, too.
FOX Sports spoke to several high school coaches in the area to understand the football breeding ground in New Orleans, which on Sunday will tie the Miami metro area for the most Super Bowls hosted by a city (11).
[Prep for the epic Eagles-Chiefs matchup on FOX Sports' Super Bowl LIX hub]
"Florida is more known for speed. Texas is known for size," Edna Karr coach Brice Brown told FOX Sports. "Louisiana is known more for attitude, with a mixture of speed and size and a particular mindset.
"That's not a shot at those other two particular states," he continued, "but Louisiana kids have a different type of mindset and a different type of want-to when it comes down to playing football."
‘In New Orleans, you play for your neighborhood'
In many parts of the country, when you meet someone for the first time and ask, ‘What school did you go to?,' the conversation naturally leads to colleges. But in New Orleans, it's understood among locals that it's a question about your high school.
That's at least partially because of the layout of the city. Competing schools are in close proximity. In the Catholic League, for instance — which offers one of the most competitive high school football leagues in the country — many member schools are separated by just a few miles.
Jesuit and Holy Cross High School have met every football season since 1922, representing the fifth-longest continuous prep rivalry in the United States. Edna Karr, a current New Orleans powerhouse on the West Bank with six state championships since 2016, has a strong rivalry with John Curtis Christian School (River Ridge, La.), an East Bank school which has won 28 state championships and is coached by J.T. Curtis, who is the winningest active prep football coach in the U.S.
Archbishop Shaw (Marrero, La.) and Archbishop Rummel (Metairie, La.) have a rivalry rooted in that they were both founded in 1962 — Shaw on the West Bank, Rummel on the East Bank.
"When I was playing back in the late '70s, nobody crossed the river to go play at another school. West Bank athletes stayed on the West Bank, East Bank athletes stayed on the East Bank," said Archbishop Rummel athletic director Jay Roth, who coached Chase and the Chargers' Kristian Fulton in high school. "Now, a kid might pass up Rummel and two other schools to go to another Catholic school and vice versa. That kid might come from the West Bank and pass up two schools to come to Rummel [on the East Bank]. So it's kind of changed where kids have choices now, just like I guess in college."
Chargers cornerback Kristian Fulton played at Archbishop Rummel on New Orleans' East Bank before starring at LSU and becoming a second-round NFL pick in 2020. (Photo by Brooke Sutton/Getty Images)
East Bank vs. West Bank championships remain a tradition at the youth level, though. The high school football programs are deeply connected to their specific communities. Multiple generations of a family will attend one school. Traditions are valued. Personal pride is taken in them.
Young boys from the same neighborhood will play football together through middle school.
For high school, they'll choose the situation that makes the most sense for them.
"In a lot of states, you play for your town, you play for your city," Roth said. "In New Orleans, you play for your neighborhood. You play for your area that you grew up in. You play for your [youth team] or your high school."
‘It's covered like Texas football is covered'
For as long as Tierney can remember, high school football has been a big deal in New Orleans.
The city didn't get the Saints until 1967. Tulane football was irrelevant on the national stage in the mid-20th century, when it went 30 years without making a bowl game (1940-69).
"If you were a New Orleans football fan, and other than you would drive 90 miles to watch LSU play, your pleasure was derived from the great high school football programs in the city," Tierney said.
Decades later, prep football is still covered religiously. It's on all the local TV stations. It's not uncommon to see it grace the front page of The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate, up there with the coverage the NFL gets.
Curtis, the winningest high school football coach in Louisiana history, even co-hosts "Friday Night Football," a high school football show that has aired on New Orleans' ABC affiliate, WGNO-TV, continuously since 1991.
"It's covered like Texas football is covered," Tierney said. "The guys who do play — the ones that end up being the best players — they are talked about for a long, long time. … The great college players, like Joe Burrow, those guys who played at LSU ... the high school players on the best teams, they're talked about in the same breath."
High school stars in New Orleans are talked about in the same vein as LSU stars like Joe Burrow. (Photo by Perry Knotts/Getty Images)
‘We have to make football more attractive than the street'
For as heated as high school football games in New Orleans can get, there's a mutual respect among the coaches.
Curtis, who has coached at John Curtis since 1969, said he can't recall a time when rival coaches in the New Orleans metro area had bitterness toward each other. He considers Brown — the coach at Edna Karr, a big rival of his school — a good friend. The last time they were together, they discussed getting lunch.
While he was the head football coach at Archbishop Rummel from 1995-2018, Roth considered every head coach in his district a personal friend. Since his coaching days, the school has invited all the district's coaches to an annual Christmas party to share stories of the season.
Coaching trees exist in the New Orleans high school football landscape. So a number of the coaches have either worked together, worked under the same person or at least know one another. That has bred a sense of familiarity.
Brown, who's been the head coach at Edna Karr for a decade, also sees the coaches as sharing a mission in a city that is more than 55% Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
"I think what the coaches have in common is they're seeking the opportunity for these young Black men to not get stuck in a box of the city of New Orleans, but go experience other things so they can create other opportunities for themselves," Brown said. "The unique part about New Orleans football is we have to make football more attractive than the street. We have to get kids into our high schools so we can get them from selling drugs, so we can get them from doing things they're not supposed to do. And I think that's what the coaches in the city have in common, particularly at a bigger school, where you think that it's all about football.
"I think it's the total opposite. It's all about opportunity."
Edna Karr High School head football coach Brice Brown sees football as a way to keep kids off the street and provide opportunity. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
‘It takes on a real meaning for us'
On Monday, Tierney was among those honored for winning the state championship.
He was welcomed on the stage at the Superdome with other coaches during Super Bowl Opening Night festivities. Each of them was awarded two tickets to the game.
Tierney has been watching Super Bowls all his life. Now he'll get to go to one for the first time.
"It takes on a real meaning for us," Tierney said.
Brown sees the return of the NFL's biggest game to New Orleans as a reward for the unique football tradition that's been created in the city.
"It gives us the opportunity to sell football to younger kids," Brown said. "‘Look, this can be you. You can be the next football player that makes it big and can play on the stage like the Super Bowl in your hometown.'"
Whatever part of the city you're from.
Ben Arthur is an NFL reporter for FOX Sports. He previously worked for The Tennessean/USA TODAY Network, where he was the Titans beat writer for a year and a half. He covered the Seattle Seahawks for SeattlePI.com for three seasons (2018-20) prior to moving to Tennessee. You can follow Ben on Twitter at @benyarthur.
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