NFL czar labels S.A. "small market"
Web Posted: 09/20/2005 12:25 PM CDT
Tom Orsborn
Express-News Staff Writer
NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue has an opinion on the issue of San Antonio’s viability as an NFL city. Two words. “Small market.”
In an interview with the New Orleans Times-Picayune published today, Tagliabue rejected the idea that San Antonio’s support for the displaced New Orleans Saints represents a chance for the city to prove its NFL worth. He inferred San Antonio isn’t capable of providing adequate support for an NFL team.
Responding to a question specifically about San Antonio’s qualifications, Tagliabue said the NFL has no plans to move “any teams into small markets.”
“We’re going to be moving up in market size, not down or flat,” Tagliabue said.
Tagliabue was blunt in his assessment of New Orleans’ chances, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, to hold on to the Saints. He said the league has all but ruled out the possibility the Saints will be able to play in New Orleans in 2006.
He said the league’s initial plan for 2006 is to play all eight Saints home games at LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., although he said logistics problems could prevent that. He also reiterated the league’s goal of placing a franchise in Los Angeles, which is currently without an NFL team.
Tagliabue said the NFL “is going to do everything possible to make sure there’s a New Orleans Saints. But people larger than us and ins utions larger than us are going to have to succeed in making sure there is a robust, healthy New Orleans, you know, with fans and businesses and all the things hope a city can have.”
The Saints, who have relocated their training headquarters to the San Antonio, will play three of their scheduled 2005 home games in Alamodome. The Oct. 2 game between the Saints and the Buffalo Bills will be the first NFL regular-season contest ever played in the Alamo City.
Ticket sales for the three games have been brisk.
"We are going to prove him wrong," Christian Archer, special assistant to Mayor Phil Hardberger, said today. Tagliabue, who declined an interview request from the Express-News, was asked in the Times-Picayune interview if San Antonio is “dangerous territory” because local leaders have billed the three Alamodome games as an opportunity for the city to show it can support an NFL team.
Tagliabue alluded to comments from former mayor Henry Cisneros.
“They have got to be clear in what their motives are,” Tagliabue said of San Antonio civic leaders. “To be helpful in the contest of a national tragedy that grows out of an unprecedented disaster. And their motive is not to steal someone else’s team. He (Cisneros) said that.”
With regard to the city’s first-day sales of 50,000 tickets for the Saints games, Tagliabue was asked: “Might this turn into an opportunity for that city to prove that they should be in the mix?”
“Ever since we approved the move of the Raiders and the Rams, I’ve been saying that our goal is to get a team back to L.A., either through expansion or whatever, and we’re not going to be moving any teams into small markets,” Tagliabue said.
“We’re going to be moving up in market size, not either down or flat. That’s our goal. So that’s been my mindset. We’ve had enough teams move from large markets to small markets. So if … any teams are relocated in the future, the objective is going to be to concentrate them — put it this way — in markets that can really support them.”
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