Are you ready for some football?

Apparently, the city of New Orleans is. In less than a week, the Saints will be back at home in the Crescent City, playing a real home game for the first time since Katrina ravaged the team’s playing field, the Super Dome, over a year ago. Having spent a year playing home games in San Antonio and Baton Rouge, the return home, the return to a sense of normalcy, is a much welcomed one for Saints players and countless football fans in New Orleans.

The National Football league seems to be quite excited about the return, as well. The league has scheduled the home opener in a prime-time spot on Monday night. And it’s attracted big-time musicians U-2 and Green Day to be a part of pre-game festivities that will benefit Music Rising, the group dedicated to bringing music back to the Gulf. For the NFL, getting the Super Dome rebuilt and football back to New Orleans was a huge deal, and this game represents the culmination of their efforts.

So fans are happy, players are happy, and the league is happy. The Saints will provide a much-needed rallying point for New Orleanians, an escape that takes their minds and energies of all the crap they’ve been dealing with. And the return of football will surely provide a little boost to New Orleans’ struggling tourism sector. Then what’s wrong with this whole situation?

It’s yet another example that government officials are, in a sense, turning the other cheek to the city’s poor and much of its former population. While the city’s tourism-rich areas have redeveloped, the ninth ward and other areas lay in ruin. While businessmen and women and many white-collar workers have returned to the city, thousands upon thousands of musicians, artisans, and people that made New Orleans so unique are displaced around the country because they have no homes to go home to. While the Super Dome, home to about 100 highly paid athletes and cherished by fans willing to shell out top dollar for tickets, is rebuilt, countless hospitals, schools, and other buildings that serviced the city’s entire population are things of the past.

Bringing football back to New Orleans is definitely a nice story. And when people watch the game on Monday night they will without a doubt hear some incredible tales of survival and perseverance. However, what they will not hear is that the return of the Saints and the rebuilding of the Super Dome has been used to overshadow the city’s real problems on the rocky road to recovery.