After New Orleans Saints kicker Garrett Hartley’s kick went through the uprights Sunday to win the NFC championship over Minnesota, icicles started to form in the depths of Hades.

Pigs took flight. President Obama and Rush Limbaugh became friends. Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.

Well, at least the first part is true.

The New Orleans Saints are going to the Super Bowl, believe it or not. And there’s one guy to whom the Who Dat Nation owes a large debt of gratitude, Saints general manager Mickey Loomis.

Steve Wilson is sports editor of The Vicksburg Post. You can reach him at 601-636-4545, ext. 142, or at swilson@vicksburgpost.com.

The franchise born on All Saints Day has not exactly enjoyed divine providence in its star-crossed history. But a lot of its woes came from a front office that was comically inept.

All that changed when Tom Benson brought in Loomis and coach Sean Payton. Loomis is easily the best general manager since the late, great Jim Finks, who brought in Jim Mora and built the Saints’ playoff teams of the early 1990s.

It’s not an easy chore to put together a top-flight NFL roster.

To build a true franchise, a front office has to properly evaluate talent, be it at the college or on other NFL teams and acquire the necessary pieces. And there’s the matter of managing the $127,000,000 salary cap. The Saints have consistently been below the cap since Loomis arrived.

As far as talent evaluation is concerned, Loomis and the front office have done a bang-up job. The biggest measure of that is not in the obvious first-round picks, which over the years the Saints have found a way to screw up (Johnathan Sullivan, the gigantic Georgia defensive tackle who ate himself out of the NFL, offensive linemen Chris Naeole and wideout Donté Stallworth are good examples of Saints first-round blunders), but how much value a general manager can mine in the later rounds of the draft.

Loomis has done it finding talent under stones that few turn over in the nation’s countless small college football programs.

The embodiment of Loomis’s genius is wideout Marques Colston, who the Saints drafted in the seventh and final round out of Hofstra, which dropped its football program this year. Now Colston is one of the league’s top wideouts.

How about Jahri Evans? Loomis grabbed him in the fourth round of the 2006 draft and all Evans has done is become a rock at right guard. If the Saints had not made the Super Bowl, Evans would play in Sunday’s Pro Bowl, his first.

Another linemen, Jermon Bushrod, has filled in admirably for injured left tackle Jammal Brown. He was a fourth-round pick out of tiny Towson.

Loomis has also made great acquisitions on the free agency front, bringing difference makers Pierre Thomas (rookie free agent and now the Saints’ starting tailback) and ballhawking safety Darren Sharper. And there was this certain quarterback coming off shoulder surgery, Drew Brees, who has only rewritten the Saints’ passing record book. He was a Loomis acquisition as well.

So if the Saints hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Loomis should receive a great deal of the credit.

Just call him the architect.