Let 'em go, who cares ... Tulane would benefit ... actually being able to come close to filling up Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park at nearly 27K :hihi: Now, there's a thought ... the home and home series with Tulane (big fuggin mistake) has LSU visiting and playing in Tad Gormley, unless the greenies play at LSU each year till the dome is rebuilt ... and take their deserved abuse.
The $aint$ have been dead for 39 years the state is better off without them. The Cleveland deal would be great for New Orleans except let ben$on take the name, the logo and anything else associated with those losers, lets start from scratch with a new team with a new name and definitely with a new owner.
If I knew the state/city would be guaranteed a team sometime in the future, even if it were not the Saints, I would be all for this version of the New Orleans NFL franchise leaving. The problem is just I don't believe New Orleans or any where else in the state will ever see NFL football again if they leave. I just would like to go down swinging if they are going to try say we can't support them.
Bad News For LSU = Half of the recruiting base in New Orleans has moved. Good News for LSU = 25% of them moved to Baton Rouge... Legal note: I have no basis for these claims. I am just making them up because I am drinking tonight in anticipation of the LSU-Auburn game tomorrow...
My aunt (who has worked in football since the days of Mack Brown at Tulane and the USFL's New Orleans Breakers) was Benson's assistant when Ditka was coaching and during that timeframe, my grandfather, her father, passed away. As he was a retired Airforce General, there was both a memorial service in Baton Rouge and a burial at Arlington over the course of 10 days. Benson fired her for taking too much time off. Couple that with the one-of-a-kind Foster brokered deal that made the Saints the only non-obligatorily subsidized franchise in the NFL and you can see why I'm not a big Benson fan. That said - I love my Saints and would love to keep them without him, if possible. Our support for them, even in the days of the brown paper bag-heads, completely embodies the spirit of our great home state. We can manage our way through any disaster, with cocktail in hand, be it another Aint's losing season or Katrina, because our friends are family, our family are friends, and by God, we're going to win or lose together. To address the original question: it benefits LSU if they stay, because it's one more thing we can all celebrate, mourn, laugh, cry, and drink over as a singular, unified, diverse, and ultimately unique culture.
Tulane has suffered the most with the Saints in N.O. When I was a young New Orleanian, anybody that wanted to see football went to Tulane games but they never sold out (old Tulane Stadium that sat 80,000) except when LSU came to town. In the last decade (before I left N.O. in 1998 till today) Tulane can't draw flies! They announce an attendance figure usually around 10,000 but the physical crowd is usually half of that. So they could benefit if the Saints leave town. But not by much. And LSU doesn't have many empty seats each year. I remember in the 1970's after the dome opened my dad bought Tulane season tickets one year in order to get LSU game tickets. He would go with my mom (or me) to the games or my ex-wife and I would go when they didn't or couldn't. I remember someone asking my wife if she was an Ole Miss grad and she told them "No, I hate Tulane so much, I'll even root for Ole Miss against them!"
