NEW ORLEANS - Brian McGowan never hesitated when it came time to renew his New Orleans Saints tickets.

On Monday night, he gets to use them when the Saints reopen the Superdome with a game against Atlanta that’s got all the trappings of a Super Bowl one year after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city.

Along with his wife and two sons, McGowan is still living in Dallas. The government trailer they’ve been waiting on for months has yet to materialize, and they’re only now starting to rebuild their home. Their close-knit family is strewn across the country — some in Phoenix, some in Baltimore, only one sibling in New Orleans.

“I said, ’Brian, we lost everything we had. We have nothing. We’re fighting with the insurance company and FEMA, and you’re going to spend money we don’t have to hold onto these tickets?”’ LaChandra McGowan recalled.

“He said, ’That’s all I have left and I won’t let them go. We’ll put it on a credit card, we’ll do whatever it takes. I won’t let them go.”’

Sure enough, the McGowans were back in New Orleans on Sunday. Their trip will be brief, time enough to see some family and friends and the Saints’ triumphant return home. But their presence — and that of thousands others like them — is as much a testament to the loyalty of Saints fans as to the resilience of the city itself.

On Monday night, the musical group U2 will perform and the first President Bush will make an appearance. The game will be a celebration of one of the country’s most unique cities, and the people who call it home.

“It’s the beginning for New Orleans to come alive again,” said Beverly Broussard, a season-ticket holder who has been making the three-hour trip from Mamou, La., for years now. “It’s a celebration of life, back in our city.”

New Orleans has always had a unique — albeit complicated — relationship with the Saints. The team has been dismal for most of its existence, not finishing with a winning record until 1987 and managing it only six times since then. Legend has it that the tradition of embarrassed fans donning paper bags began here, and the team was often derided as the “Aints.”

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But much like Green Bay and its beloved Packers, the Saints are considered family in New Orleans. You may not like them much sometimes, but they’re yours and the only one you’ve got.

Fans filled the dome year after year, and the city’s mood rose and fell with the team’s won-loss record. Monica Ramsey took her devotion one step further, decorating her kitchen with Saints wallpaper, curtains and a rug, and topping it all off with a black and gold ceiling fan.

“We like our little team,” said Larry Broussard, Ramsey’s father.

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Which made last year’s hardships all the more difficult. Residents who were evacuated scoured their “new” cities for sports bars that showed Saints games. Some couldn’t always get the games, and had to be content with highlights here and there. Fans living outside New Orleans missed the routine they’d settled into over the years.

Tom Lambert, a New Orleans native who now lives in Tampa, has been making the 20-hour round trip for Saints home games for years. But the closest he got last season was watching on television with the half-dozen relatives who took shelter in his house.

“It was kind of odd,” he said.