Local officials should be wary when playing hardball with Saints, NFL

A wise man recently told me the following.

“Son, you can either be right or you can be married.”

Which is what the state of Louisiana and Governor Jeff Landry need to understand when it comes to dealing with the New Orleans Saints and the NFL. They are always right.

Don’t think so?

Well, let’s jog back to 2002. New Orleans had the first Super Bowl after the September 11 attacks. Because of the tragedy, the NFL pushed its season back one week.

The week after the scheduled Super Bowl date, the National Automobile Dealers Association had set their convention in New Orleans. The auto dealers balked at pushing its convention back one week. The NFL then floated Pasadena, California as a possible site if New Orleans was unavailable.

It was a big-time leverage play, the kind the NFL is famous.

It worked. NADA capitulated. They moved back a week.

This week, one of Governor Jeff Landry’s lieutenants, Shane Guidry, objected to the Saints withholding an $11.4 million payment for ongoing stadium renovations because the organization was unhappy with the alleged lack of progress in talks for a new lease.

Here’s Guidry, quoted by nola.com:

“We cannot have a gun to our head saying, “We are not going to fund our portion of the renovation unless you give us the 10 year lease that we want. If it was all one contract tied together, fine. It’s not.”

He’s correct…but it doesn’t matter.

The NFL does whatever it wants. Only on rare occasion does the League lose. In 2021, Rams owner Stan Kroenke settled a lawsuit filed against he and the NFL by the city of St. Louis, after the Rams returned to Los Angeles. St. Louis was awarded $790 million.

A former Louisiana Governor, the late Edwin Edwards, understood the power of the NFL. In 1985, Edwards helped put together the deal when Tom Benson bought the club from John Mecom. Benson and Edwards got along famously. Edwards understood what Benson owned. That is, the number one business in the state of Louisiana and its most high profile.

For New Orleans to ever lose its NFL team would a be a total and unmitigated catastrophe.

Yet, other Governors have had contentious moments with Benson.

In 2001, the Saints owner openly flirted with other possibilities, including moving the team to a new stadium in nearby Hancock County, Mississippi. This disenchantment came to a head after Katrina, when San Antonio made a huge play to keep the Saints there after the storm.

However, even the NFL couldn’t ignore the optics of attempting to move a team after the greatest natural disaster in the history of the country.

The Saints returned. Benson and Louisiana reconciled.

Four seasons later, New Orleans was celebrating a Super Bowl championship.

Since a long-term lease was signed 15 years ago, the Saints and Superdome Commission have been in an elongated kumbaya. That’s why this week’s hubbub between the two was so unusual. It was the first real brush up in a very long time.

Late last week, the Governor and Mrs. Benson had what we are told is a great conversation.

Mrs. Benson has said repeatedly that her goal was to keep both the Saints and Pelicans in New Orleans for a long time but eventually business is business, and the NFL is used to having its way.

If New Orleans, which will host only its third Super Bowl in 23 years wants another one anytime soon, the Governor and his Superdome Commission must remember the following.

“You can right, or you can be married.”