The Saints are leaving. We'll have some up and down days, some "maybe they will, maybe they won't" interim time, but they're really gone. Benson is a repellent, ungrateful foolish asshole extortionist. Even if he stays he will demand money in subsidies that the city and state don't have to give him. Or, they have it, and think it might be spent better on people who have lost everything-- not on car salesmen with big yachts and millions of dollars in the bank. The team is gone. We all know it, and we might as well get used to it. It's building in me an enormous disdain for San Antonio, a town I used to kind of like.
But if Benson wasn't happy with New Orleans revenues, he's going to love San Antonio-- a smaller Dome, no commensurate tourism or industry, fewer and lesser hotel rooms and fewer and much lesser restaurants and less convention business, and fewer, I might add, luxury suites. Let that fat old bastard Benson go-- and bad luck to him. He'll be known forever as the guy who, confronted with the worst crisis in his hometown's history, turned and ran. The city has given him years and years of goodwill and forebearance for the love of a team that has one exactly one playoff game in nearly 40 years. He's given the city a sucker kick to the gut while it was down. I wonder if the fans in Texas, which already has two other football teams, will be a fourth as tolerant as the poor people he's so willing to to abandon to their destitution. Wait 'til the San Antonians have to pony up $75 to watch a team blow a game.
I kind of hope-- as Ray Nagin does-- we get what Cleveland got a few years back. Let us keep the name and the logo. But I don't tink that will happen. I think the best we can hope for is a name and logo change-- like what happened when the Oilers left Houston to become the Tennessee Titans. Let Benson move his team of jerkwads to Texas and become the San Antonio Salsa, or the Banditos or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves. Seeing the fleur de lis on the helmets of a team belonging to another city would break my heart.
But hell, the Utah "Jazz" still pisses me off. I'm cranky in general.
Benson's people are laying the groundwork already. Marketing in Baton Rouge for the games here has been non-existent. I haven't seen one ad. And the game on Halloween is against Nick Saban's Dolphins-- with Ricky Williams back in the lineup. There's only one reason the team isn't pushing this matchup. They just don't want the state to look like it can sustain the Saints. The San Antonio games were "sold out" due to lots of relief organizations and charities giving away tickets they were given. But the organization isn't even giving Baton Rouge a chance.
I have tickets to all four games here. I bought them when I was proud the Saints were going to make an effort to play in the state, when I thought they might be serious about sticking around and helping us rebuild. I'm toying with sending them to Benson. With expletives scrawled on them.
But I won't. I'll go to the games. I'll wear my Saints hat and yell my head off. Enjoy myself while I have the chance, and do my part to poke holes in the notion that the team had no support. And I'll say goodbye. Just another damn leave-taking necessitated by this storm. There have been a lot of them these days.
05 November 2022
Up Yours Benson
The Saints are leaving. We'll have some up and down days, some "maybe they will, maybe they won't" interim time, but they're really gone. Benson is a repellent, ungrateful foolish asshole extortionist. Even if he stays he will demand money in subsidies that the city and state don't have to give him. Or, they have it, and think it might be spent better on people who have lost everything-- not on car salesmen with big yachts and millions of dollars in the bank. The team is gone. We all know it, and we might as well get used to it. It's building in me an enormous disdain for San Antonio, a town I used to kind of like.
But if Benson wasn't happy with New Orleans revenues, he's going to love San Antonio-- a smaller Dome, no commensurate tourism or industry, fewer and lesser hotel rooms and fewer and much lesser restaurants and less convention business, and fewer, I might add, luxury suites. Let that fat old bastard Benson go-- and bad luck to him. He'll be known forever as the guy who, confronted with the worst crisis in his hometown's history, turned and ran. The city has given him years and years of goodwill and forebearance for the love of a team that has one exactly one playoff game in nearly 40 years. He's given the city a sucker kick to the gut while it was down. I wonder if the fans in Texas, which already has two other football teams, will be a fourth as tolerant as the poor people he's so willing to to abandon to their destitution. Wait 'til the San Antonians have to pony up $75 to watch a team blow a game.
I kind of hope-- as Ray Nagin does-- we get what Cleveland got a few years back. Let us keep the name and the logo. But I don't tink that will happen. I think the best we can hope for is a name and logo change-- like what happened when the Oilers left Houston to become the Tennessee Titans. Let Benson move his team of jerkwads to Texas and become the San Antonio Salsa, or the Banditos or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves. Seeing the fleur de lis on the helmets of a team belonging to another city would break my heart.
But hell, the Utah "Jazz" still pisses me off. I'm cranky in general.
Benson's people are laying the groundwork already. Marketing in Baton Rouge for the games here has been non-existent. I haven't seen one ad. And the game on Halloween is against Nick Saban's Dolphins-- with Ricky Williams back in the lineup. There's only one reason the team isn't pushing this matchup. They just don't want the state to look like it can sustain the Saints. The San Antonio games were "sold out" due to lots of relief organizations and charities giving away tickets they were given. But the organization isn't even giving Baton Rouge a chance.
I have tickets to all four games here. I bought them when I was proud the Saints were going to make an effort to play in the state, when I thought they might be serious about sticking around and helping us rebuild. I'm toying with sending them to Benson. With expletives scrawled on them.
But I won't. I'll go to the games. I'll wear my Saints hat and yell my head off. Enjoy myself while I have the chance, and do my part to poke holes in the notion that the team had no support. And I'll say goodbye. Just another damn leave-taking necessitated by this storm. There have been a lot of them these days.
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