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while I enjoyed your article on Payton, and as a New Orleanean I've developed a love/hate (threatening to move the Saints to San Antonio after the worst natural disaster in US history) relationship with him, I think you're way off on your assessment of Tom Benson. If you look at the Saints payroll over the past 10 years, you'll find that, on average, they're right in the middle of the league in terms of spending. This despite the fact that they're one of the 3 smallest markets and, before the Brees/Payton era, weren't big money makers. Not only that, but in the only uncapped since 1993, the Saints had the third largest payroll in the NFL at $145m, behind only the cash-printing Cowboys and Redskins. You speak of Benson's putting Loomis in a major roll with the Hornets (admittedly a bad move, IMO), but this was a franchise in disarray, that could have very well been moved to another city at any moment, and not only bought them and kept them in NOLA, but paid Eric Gordon his money as well as brought in a major FA in Ryan Anderson and a lesser one in Brooke Lopez. Like Nick Saban, who brought LSU back from irrelevancy and inadvertently handed NOLA a Super Bowl in choosing Dante Culpepper over Drew Brees, you can hate on Tom Benson, but, in the end, you can't deny that he's been great for the Saints and the state of LA.

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but paid Eric Gordon his money as well as brought in a major FA in Ryan Anderson and a lesser one in Brooke Lopez.

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Brooke Lopez

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New Orleanean

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Population (2011)[1] • City and Parish 360,740 • Density 1,965/sq mi (759/km2) • Metro 1,167,764 Demonym New Orleanian Time zone CST (UTC-6) • Summer (DST) CDT (UTC-5) Area code(s) 504

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FA in Ryan Anderson and a lesser one in Brooke Lopez.

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I'm not going to casty this because i have no idea who either of these guys are.

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truly just uninformed, but that is a growing problem today. The term "talking heads" is becoming the norm rather than aberration. Very few media people put in the time and effort to do any real research. They just zip something out regardless of the validity of content. Even worse, many purposefully look for the sensationalistic side or slant. This is done increasingly even knowing that the story is questionable or even an outright mistruth. This is fueled by the TMZ-fed culture of today. Whatever sells or whatever gets eyeballs- say it. Look at threads here. Usually they reflect the same thing in reply count.

I did learn that we dunno if this will count as a year in Payton's contract or not.

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blueslover

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