Saints owe New Orleans a season to say good-bye

	Many people believe Saints owner Tom Benson wants to wave good-bye to New Orleans as soon as possible. Chris Graythen/Getty Images

Once it was safe for the sports cynics to express themselves following the Hurricane Katrina tragedy, they didn't waste any time giving their thoughts on the ultimate fate of the New Orleans Saints: "This," they said, "may have been the best thing to happen to Tom Benson."

Benson owns the Saints, who've long been as beleaguered on the field (they're 2-5 in this lost season) as off. Even before Katrina struck, their home, the Superdome, was a relic akin to the Parthenon. In its heyday it was an homage to a generation where bigger was best and biggest was enough to attract conventions of all sizes. And Super Bowls.

Now no one wants to be in the Dome, not with those lasting images of the building as a failed and frightful refuge for thousands of New Orleans's poorest, those who had neither the means to escape Katrina nor the resources to endure what she wrought. And with so many of the Saints fans having been driven from their homes, Benson sees an opening to permanently relocate his team to drier, more habitable environs, a move that he's been pondering for years.

The leading candidate is San Antonio, where the Vagab-aints have played two "home" games this season and whose mayor has been drooling over the Saints like a geek over the prom queen. "I will use every effort I can to get the Saints here permanently," he told a San Antonio TV station last week. "I'm not backing down."

The  mayor's remark came on the heels of another blown gasket by his New Orleans compadre, Ray Nagin, whose powers of bluster and overstatement are all too familiar to us now. "We got the doggone Saints talking about going to San Antonio; let 'em go," Nagin barked, alluding to the Saints front office. "We want our Saints. We may not want the owner back."

This was upon learning Benson's attorneys had sent a letter to Superdome officials stating that the team's practice site, in Jefferson parish, was so damaged that it was unusable "for some time [if ever]." The Saints pay but $1 annually to lease the facility, so the site would seem to mean little in the overall soap opera that has embroiled the Saints and their city in recent years. But New Orleans officials believe the letter was Benson's first move in a legal game that could cost the city its team.