committed to money maybe. he's committed to being able to offer a substandard product yet maintain top attendances and sales for an NFL franchise. he could never continually lose in a Cali market as he has here and survive more than 5 years.
Regardless of your feelings about Benson, it would be nice for all the New Orleans evacuees to have something to cheer about in Baton Rouge. You can fit 90K people in Tiger Stadium. That could be a lot of free tickets for people who are in shelters at that time.
Have you watched the Saints lately? They'll only deepen the depression. And I'm not being flip. I'm serious.
Playing at Reliant Stadium in Houston makes the most sense right now. Tons of Louisiana natives in Houston, thousands of refugees (FREE TICKETS, like most of the sporting events here) and the capacity to handle it. I love Tiger Stadium, and I get giddy about thinking of an NFL game there, but not now. Wrong time.
Re: NFL wants Saints to play close to home i would get season tickets. I do think TS would be a bad option in terms of lodgistics which is why I think shreveport or Houston would be viable options.
I don't think you realize the money he's passing up by not taking the Saints to L.A. Someone like Art Modell would have already ran to the left coast. Just the TV money alone would be worth it, not to mention owning it for a few years and then selling it for $800 million plus. Don't forget he only paid about $78 million for it to begin with. There is a little greed in every NFL owner, but Benson is at the bottom of that scale. A guy who runs the NFL's finance committee could be doing a whole lot better than he is already doing and he's really not doing too bad. he's making more money than Bob Craft is. Benson is definitely a bad manager of his team, but greedy (by NFL standards) he is not...
Excellent points MLU. Easy to forget that pro franchises aren't charities, and that in the grand scheme of things, Benson hasn't quite been the devil. And he won't be if he moves the team, either, IMO.
that's why they moved a couple teams from that booming metropolis already. cuz there's so much money to be made. as i said, he could never offer a substandard product and generate half the revenue he has for so many years here. No way in hell. the saints have won 1 playoff game in what? almost 40 years? check out the historical attendance numbers for the saints then compare them to teams with much better records in better markets over that same period. 5 years and he'd wish he was back with the lovable loyal loser saints fans. you guys who think benson is committed to the city are drinking the jim jones special.
How could they play 2 NFL games in the same stadium on the same day? The might do it every once in a while at the Meadowlands but it seems impractical to do it, especially if a place like Tiger Stadium could somehow be available.
