re: Flashback:Tom Benson epic rant

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Actually it was Paul Tagliabue, Sean Payton and Drew Brees.

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Tagliabue deserved a statue out front the stadium. Everyone forgets how poorly Benson handled Katrina and the lost season. The efforts to move the team to San Antonio. That’s why Jones got involved. He didn’t want another team in Texas.

But ole Paul was steadfast in his commitment to the city and state that the team would return. And ultimately they did and the team went on to have a hugely successful run.

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Actually it was Paul Tagliabue, Sean Payton and Drew Brees.

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The decision was made well before Sean or Brees were even a thought. It was tags and Jerrah that stepped to the plate. Joe Horn called it out in real time. He deserves some credit too.

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Toronto Canada

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I lol’d at that also

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If the Saints go 4-12 in 2006, and there are 35,000 or so people in the Superdome in November and December, even Tagliabue may not have been able to stop Benson from claiming NO after Katrina simply couldn't support a NFL team anymore. Winning that year was absolutely essential with all the uncertainty going on in the city. You're naive if you think otherwise.

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It's amazing how many people have either forgotten or never realized this. The NFL (especially in the Pete Rozelle / Paul Tagliabue eras) was a PR driven league. The other owners and Taglibue knew how badly it would look if they bailed on New Orleans during its worst time. Also, as others have stated, Jerry Jones didn't want the Saints to move into an area that always had a massive Cowboys fan base. So, they gave Kathleen Blanco and Doug Thorton (who was nothing short of a miracle worker in getting the Superdome ready for the 2006 season) an impossible timeline to keep the Saints in New Orleans and somehow, they pulled it off. To this day, I'm convinced that they didn't expect things to turn out like they did. They figured that either the Superdome wouldn't be ready until at least 2007 or that the Saints would continue to flounder and people would ultimately have neither the means nor the interest to attend games. Then, after a couple of years, they could move the Saints and say, we tried but it just wasn't working. We helped the city rebuild the Superdome, so that they can continue to use it for other events and we wish the people of New Orleans well in their continued recovery. Once the Saints took off and fan support took off with it, there was no way that they could let the Saints leave.

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I still get irrationally angry about how Benson handled all of that in the weeks following Katrina. The majority of your fan base & employees just lost everything and this asshat is using it as an opportunity of a lifetime to bail out.

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You and me both. Benson’s behavior in the months following Katrina was reprehensible.

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never understood the revisionist history love affair with Benson. Before Katrina & certainly right after Katrina he was an absolute POS & I’ll never forget the shite he tried to pull.

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This

I remember when I watched this press conference live. It was a time when the public viewed Benson as a Scrooge and a tyrant. Then Katrina happened and he went straight to San Antonio, the rumored relocation city for several years. He wanted to leave and I did not blame him for what was going on at the time. Lucky for us that the NFL stepped in.

That incident outside of Tiger Stadium was typical behavior. He had enough.

It seemed that from that point forward he stepped off of the stage and let his PR team take over to speak for him. Maybe he hired a firm after the incident. Within two years the PR team turned him from a Montgomery Burns to a Ned Flanders.

The next 10+ years was all kinds of media coverage saying how faithful he was to the city, how he is an awesome owner, etc, etc.

It was a bizarre change of opinion.

I don’t blame him for being an Ahole from the end of the Mora era to 2006. He saw the entire league in a space race to build new stadiums, increase revenue, etc and he wanted to be a part of it. Problem was the state was so far behind the times they had no vision for the future, and Benson saw that and had this press conference. Katrina forced the stadium renovation.

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It is as weird how he had to say Canada, as if most people didn’t know it was in Canada? Found it odd.

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He should have said Toronto Ontario. Really throw people off.

If Tom were alive today imagine the rant. D.A. would have been long gone.

I remember all of this like it was yesterday. What are we gonna do the next time they say they want a new stadium?

Because I can see it coming from a mile away.