During a time in which NFL owners risk alienating fans through risking a work stoppage by buying out the last two years of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement, at least a half dozen owners have gotten it right by supporting one good proposal – returning the Super Bowl to New Orleans in 2013.
The French Quarter last hosted a Super Bowl in 2002. The city obviously continues to struggle with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and it hasn’t bid for the big game in awhile. But the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that at least a half-dozen influential owners, including the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, the Saints’ Tom “Twinkletoes” Benson, and Chicago’s Mike McCaskey support the move.
The NFL did an idiotic thing this year forcing the Saints to play a home game in London. Enough other media outlets have chastised the league for doing this, but I’ll pile on – the Saints lost enough home games following Katrina a couple years ago, they shouldn’t have been forced to lose another this year.
But bringing the Super Bowl back to a city that has never before gone a decade without hosting the NFL’s premier event is absolutely the right thing to do. The league needs to get it done. It’ll have been well over a decade and that’s way too long.
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The problem is we only have a contract with the Saints till 2010. If we can’t be sure that we will actually have an NFL team here they have their hands tied.
All the support in the world won’t do anything until the papers get signed.
JaimeH …
You make a good point, though I would make two points.
1) If Benson actually moves the Saints after all the city has been through he will be rightfully vilified all over the country – and in the pages of Zoneblitz. I think the Saints will find a way to stay in N.O.
2) I would argue that New Orleans is one of very few cities in this country that might not need to actually have a team to still be worthy of hosting a Super Bowl.
“Rightly vilified” ? I’ll bet that matters to Benson even less than it did to Norm Green or Art Modell.
I didn’t say it was going to matter to him. Just that he would be vilified.
He’d be more rightfully vilified than any other owner that has ever moved a team before.