If you can't support your team, don't count on a 'cane to cover that up.
Then why not lay off of us...We have no contol over our Mayor and Benson's decisions....We're fans just like them...We're only a city that wants and NFL team whether the Saints stay here of we can get our own....We are just proving we can support a team...
San Antonio can keep the Saints, or it can keep its good reputation.
It can't keep both.
Thank you. Someone who isn't afraid to tell it like it is. I donated money, towels, toiletries, water, and half the clothes out of my closet. The rest of my family did the same. And all we got for it from Saints fan was, "Ha, ha, ha. You couldn't sell out your first NFL game. Now go away and stop trying to loot our team."
This was actually the first time I've seen a Saints fan offer any kind of thanx. But even then, it was all under the guise of coming in here to trash the people of our city and call us "looters."
If your team ends up here in San Antonio, it's because that's what YOUR team owner wants. Not because we stole them. You want sympathy? Go look in the dictionary between " " and "syphilis".
What's a "good reputation" worth these days?
They're frustrated and sick of, among other things:
-- seeing those "SAints" shirts in the Alamodome
--the mayor of San Antonio trying to start relocation talks in the middle of the NFL season (which I think has no precedent in the modern era)
--watching the Meadowlands and the Giants get a Saints home game for some publicity stunt
--seeing the loudest mouthpiece for Louisiana getting any home games in the Saints administration after the Katrina tragedy gets unceremoniously canned Monday morning
--players like Joe Horn saying they wish they could play more games in San Antonio
--uncertain status of the "temporary" Superdome reconstruction and renovation that started this week
I'm sure there's a uva lot more that I'm leaving out.
What is our average over the past 10 years????? I may have been wrong with top 10 (that is what I heard) but I know we are in the top half over the past 10 years. Don't forget that we are considered a small market and we hang with some of the large markets in terms of attendance.
The premise here is flawed.
San Antonio's courtship of Benson and the Saints (at least in a public sense) didn't start until Benson's team relocated here and comments attributed to Benson indicated that he desired to move his team here permanently. What I don't understand about the complaints from New Orleans is what they expected San Antonio to do in that situation?
Faced with a very real offer to have an NFL team in San Antonio, should the city leaders have simply said "You know, we would normally be interested, but given the catastrophe of Katrina, we can't do anything to entice the Saints."
Then again, that's exactly what the City's leaders did -- originally.
Tagliabue upped the stakes and got San Antonio's gander up. By characterizing San Antonio as a small market, City leaders understandably became inflamed and desired to show Tagliabue and the rest of the world that San Antonio has the ability to sell tickets and get fannies in seats for NFL games. Given the disparity between what San Antonio did (on extremely short notice) to get tickets sold, the apparent problems with selling tickets in New Orleans, and Tagliabue's characterization, it makes sense that there was no more reason for San Antonio to play Mr. Nice Guy in this. Mr. Nice Guy, who looks out for the interests of others, tends to get rolled over. Since it appeared that so many didn't respect the efforts of this City and its ability to support a team, why shouldn't the City make a stronger push to court the Saints? It's only in our own best interests -- which nobody else seems terribly concerned with.
The straw that broke the camel's back for me is the remembrance of New Orleans' attempt to lure the Spurs. I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of New Orleans and their plight post-Katrina.
But when it comes to this issue, I've lost any sense of sympathy for bedraggled Saints fans. Your city unabashedly came after the Spurs -- why on Earth should we think twice about courting the Saints? After all, what's good for the goose . . . .
Is it stealing if the team wants to move here?
Question.
I guess I'm in the minority, but I'm embarassed at what San Antonio is doing with regard to the Saints. There are "right" ways and "wrong" ways, and this is wrong.
And if another city was doing this, a lot of folks around here would be way up on their moral high horses on the other side of the fence.
A few interesting reads for anyone who is up for them:
Times-Picayune: Saints loss victory for San Antonio
http://www.nola.com/sports/t-p/index...5527205800.xml
Times (Shreveport): Fielkow firing not good for Saints fans
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/...032/SPORTS0302
Advocate (Baton Rouge): State rushes to fix Dome for Saints
http://www.2theadvocate.com/stories/..._dome001.shtml
Sun Herald (Biloxi, MS): Cowardly move shows Benson's truest colors
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/thesunh...s/12937757.htm
I agree with you Shoog. I think Hardberger has seemed a little too eager. I do also believe however, that Benson has been as well.
Precisely.
All Louisiana has to do is come up with a new facility. After all, that's what SA did when those thieving es from the bayous tried to loot our beloved Spurs.
Beats me.
The city will have to put up with a near-unanimous round of condemnation from media and fans around the country.
And that of course will only get worse when San Antonians write writing profane and defensive letters to God and everyone.
But a tangible loss? I don't know. Do people around the country hate Baltimore for doing to Cleveland what was done to them? Probably not.
Surely S.A. will lose some of that image of friendliness and charm and good old-fashioned values. The city will have somewhat of an edge now. San Antonians will be known as the kind of people who will backstab a neighbor in need to get something they want. And what can you say? That image is accurate. But, it's not necessarily bad for business, and the city is becoming more and more a business center for manufacturing and biotech, and less and less a sleepy tourist haven. And often the business moguls demand that you stab the little guy in the back to get them what they need. For all I know, this behavior may raise S.A.'s standing in their eyes.
Becoming cutthroat is just part of growing up, apparently. Let San Antonians ponder what they have lost, if they still care. The small-town feel is dying.
Anyway, Benson is the true coward and bas here. He had a chance to show real leadership and spearhead the Gulf Coast recovery with the visibility of his franchise. Instead, he's taking the opportunity to turn tail and run from the challenge.
He is a very small, very cheap, very miserly, evil and bas ly little man. As he nears death, I can only give him advice to pack very light for the hereafter. I imagine he will spend eternity having his flesh continuously gnawed away by nutria rats.
San Antonio is an accomplice here, but Benson is the real mother er.
Also -- note from the lesson of Phoenix: when you get the team, you get its owner, too. And the Benson clan are ty little people, and the way they run the team, and have always run the team, reflects that. The contrast with the Spurs could not be more striking.
You do sound cruel.
Clarify something for me...did this flood make the Spurs dome unusable? Did the Spurs have to relocate because of this flood? Where did the Spurs play while the dome was being repaired? Where there other cir stances surrounding the Spurs that prompted N.O. to court the Spurs franchise?
Honestly I don't know becuase I don't follow the NBA and don't particularly care for professional basketball. I vaugly remember this whole fiasco but do not recall the details.
I never asked for your sympathy. PART OF REBUILDING OUR CITY IS GETTING OUR FOOTBALL TEAM BACK!!!! Rebuilding can be described as putting things back how they were which would include the New Orleans Saints.
We have sustained a losing NFL team for 38 years. There is no need to justify this any further.
I am living in a home in N.O. that has 9 people in a 2 bedroom house. I am also forutanate that the company I work for sustained minimal damage. I have internet access at home and at work.
Again I think you for all you have done and continue to do with the people who are displaced from their homes.
I never said a word of that...please don't group me in with someone from another board. I don't care where the Saints play....I want them to win every game.
Exactly.
I don't think you're right. Benson isn't even entertaining the idea of a new facility in Louisiana.
He just wants out, yesterday preferrably.
It all comes down to money, or rather how much money governments here or there decide to give Benson.
In light of all the money to be spent in reconstruction, how many millions do folks from NOLA want to go into Benson's pocket?
Right on j-6
Actually, when places like NOLA were doing this with the Spurs, I said SA was going to have to bend over the table to keep them in town.And if another city was doing this, a lot of folks around here would be way up on their moral high horses on the other side of the fence.
Eventually they did.
NOLA will have to do the same this time.
That's another red herring.
The Superdome is insured. Insurance will pay the bulk of the cost to refurbish it.
That facility would be a logical anchor for the development projects that will be needed in New Orleans to re-establish the economy there, whether the Saints stick around or not.
The thing is, he's SA's mother er. This is pretty much the only way SA is going to get a team in the next decade. I think the league has reached its limit with franchises. Maybe another relocation opportunity will pop up, but SA would have to stand on its own against other potential destinations (ie Los Angeles).
There were two NFL owners with ties to the area. McCombs was never going to move that team out of a superior market to SA. But Benson's always had the much more appealing proposition...move from a poor market to a better one and one where he had deep ties.
If NO didn't try to capitalize on SA's inability to get a facility deal done back in the late 90s and Benson hadn't been making plenty of noise for years about relocating, I might feel otherwise.
Great post.
The Baltimore-Cleveland comparison is pretty interesting. I'm lurked on and off on a board called Saintsreport.com since the beginning of the season, and there's a big push to contact Browns fans and see what they did after Modell-gate.
Though I do wonder what the Baltimore fans, especially the ones that shifted their alliance to the Redskins after the Colts left, thought of the Browns/Ravens move to town and the national negativity shed upon their city.
This will be worse, though, because SA will be viewed both as a thieving opportunist in the wake of a natural disaster and a town willing to get into bed with a snake like Benson.
Stout...I get your points. Along those same lines, (and this goes out to everyone also...)do you think it is wrong for SA to try and get the team if Benson is offering them? (if indeed that is the case)
Wrong....wrong....wrong...Quit believing everythign the media out there tells you to make S.A. feel better. He wants a new stadium. There are plans for several different stadiums in different areas of the city.
The agreement has been a remodelling of the superdome until the new stadium can be built by 2010 or something like that.
There is a long term plan for the Saints in N.O. and Benson was a part of it until Katrina...now who knows because he isn't speaking (get used to that).
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