Posted on Fri, Dec. 23, 2005

Saints' desire to move could hit NFL roadblock

BY RAY BUCK

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

FORT WORTH, Texas - Santa Claus is coming to town.

But what about the NFL?

San Antonians want to know.

Saturday's Lions-Saints matchup at the Alamodome will attract a near-sellout, which has to impress the suits at NFL headquarters in New York, because even they recognize this as a meaningless game between two of the league's bottom-feeders, each with double-digit losses.

This marks the third Saints home game hosted by San Antonio since Hurricane Katrina forced owner Tom Benson's team out of New Orleans nearly four months ago.

Benson, a San Antonio car dealer, wants to move the franchise to the Alamo City permanently, or at least through the 2006 season, to assure his team some stability.

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, meanwhile, insists upon giving New Orleans a fighting chance to keep the Saints there, even if that best-case scenario involves an estimated $175 million for repairs to the Superdome, with a targeted completion of Nov. 1 for the work.

Benson's critics consider him greedy and shameful to even suggest pulling the Saints out of New Orleans.

This, they remind, is a time for human healing and community reconstruction - not plans for defection.

The sensitivity issue is an NFL hot button.

On Tuesday, Tagliabue and Benson met - again - in an attempt to achieve some middle ground, although no announcement on the Saints' future is due until next month.

"If the Saints can return to New Orleans, that's the first place they should be," said Christian Archer, chief assistant to San Antonio Mayor Phil Hardberger. "But if they can't, then San Antonio is a hell of an option."

San Antonio has shown that it can be the best "second home" that a displaced NFL franchise could hope to have.

The Alamodome, built in 1993, lacks a few amenities that have become today's NFL standard, such as too few luxury suites - 38.

That's now roughly one-third the NFL average.

Still, Benson sees San Antonio as a familiar city with a fan base starving for pro football (no wisecracks about the Saints), and a corporate infrastructure that may or may not return to New Orleans anytime soon.

NFL rules require a three-fourth's vote by the 32-team ownership to gain approval to move a team.

For Benson, for now, that's unlikely to happen.

Caretakers - again?

In the spirit of Christmas, the NFL is willing to give San Antonio a few more games to host in 2006, or until the Superdome is NFL-ready around midseason.

San Antonio officials would be happy to be picked as temporary caretakers again, but they envision something bigger down the road.

"Texas is certainly a big enough football state to have three NFL franchises," Archer said.

After Saturday, the Saints will have played three home games inside the 65,500-seat Alamodome.

Paid attendance for the first two averaged 62,125.

By comparison, four home games played at LSU's Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., averaged 40,310.

In a recent Times-Picayune poll, 33 of 54 Saints players said they would prefer to practice and play all their home games next season in San Antonio.

Players have had to check their egos at the door in the Alamo City, using high school locker rooms and practice fields as their temporary headquarters.

They've even conducted walk-throughs in the Alamodome parking lot when that facility was booked.

Only six players voted to play their 2006 home games in Baton Rouge and to practice in Metairie, La., site of the team's existing practice facility_which has been deemed usable again.

The remaining 15 players polled had "no preference" to where the Saints end up.

"What's clear is that a split schedule doesn't work for the players or the franchise," Archer said.

The 3-11 Saints spread their eight home games over 1,600 miles: East Rutherford, N.J., Baton Rouge, La., and San Antonio.

Cheese and stuff

The Alamodome was built in 1993 to attract NFL expansion. But league owners voted to give Carolina and Jacksonville the new teams that began play in `95.

After that, the Rams moved from Anaheim, Calif., to St. Louis (1995) and the Raiders left Los Angeles to return to Oakland (1995); the Browns bolted from Cleveland to Baltimore and became the Ravens (1996), and the Oilers defected from Houston for Tennessee (1997) and eventually became the Titans (1999).

Only Cleveland was guaranteed by the league to receive an expansion team, which would keep the old nickname, colors, logo and records. That deal may never happen again.

But what did happen in the late `90s was that NFL franchises became patio furniture - easy to move.

"Who Moved My Team?" became the NFL's version of the 1998 bestseller Who Moved My Cheese?, featuring two "little people" in jogging suits - Hem and Haw - who tried to match wits with two mice, Sniff and Scurry, in pursuit of cheese in a maze.

It was a lesson in how to accept change.

But for NFL fans, the book also served as a reminder - as outlined in the "Handwriting on the Wall" - that "the more important your Cheese is to you, the more you want to hold onto it," as well as Hem's misguided advice: "There's enough Cheese here to last forever."

Of course, there never is.

Dr. Richard Lustberg, a New York sports psychologist, believes many sports fans live in denial.

"When capitalism works for them, they like it. When it doesn't, they don't," Lustberg said. "Well, you can't have it both ways."

Uncertain future

Benson is a businessman with civic duty, a contradiction in itself.

It will be interesting if he's ordered by Tagliabue to return to Louisiana - where Benson is vilified_and told to market his team "regionally," much like the Packers do in Green Bay.

The Saints were a hard sell long before Katrina.

Al Davis twice moved his Raiders by challenging the NFL in the courts - and twice he won. Other NFL owners changing addresses received the blessing of league partners each time.

The second-largest U.S. city - Los Angeles - has been without an NFL team since the Raiders returned to Oakland and the Rams defected to St. Louis, both in 1995.

Tagliabue stood on the LA City Hall steps last month and spoke to reporters about his desire for a team there, but he could offer no timeline.

"These things aren't driven by timelines," Tagliabue said. "They're driven by good-faith discussions."

Hey, San Antonio is up for that.

"We've got a lot to offer a sports franchise," said Archer, San Antonio's liaison between the city and the Saints. "The Florida Marlins were here to visit recently, although football in this state has always been first.

"But we don't view ourselves as competitors of Los Angeles," Archer added. "Los Angeles has tried twice (Rams and Raiders) and failed twice."

After Saturday, San Antonio will have a lot of time to make its arguments ... as it sits and waits.