Hurricane Katrina's Impact on the New Orleans Saints By Rick Grantham At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The city of New Orleans was the place where Hurricane Katrina hit the hardest in August of 2005. The hurricane extensively damaged the Louisiana Superdome, the home of the New Orleans Saints. Because of this, the Saints were not able to play any home games for the whole of the 2005 NFL season.

The Saints practiced approximately for a week in San Jose, California for a preseason game against the Oakland Raiders. This was their first temporary evacuation site. Then, they moved to San Antonio, Texas to set up temporary headquarters and practice facility. The first home game of the Saints during this time was played at the Giants Stadium with the succeeding games played at either the Tiger Stadium at the LSU and the Alamodome in San Antonio. The administration offices and practices were also held in San Antonio for the entire season.

During this time, media reports indicated that San Antonio expressed the want of a possible permanent relocation of the team to San Antonio. Local officials have strongly voiced out these concerns with promises of upgrading the Alamodome or even building a new stadium for the Saints. Even Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones supported having an NFL team moving to San Antonio. But all their efforts remained futile as the NFL want to keep the franchise in New Orleans. There were also rumors that the NFL wanted to move the team to LA or even have them expand to Toronto.

But this was really bad news for the New Orleans Saints' fans who thought that other people were taking advantage of their situation after Hurricane Katrina to steal the Saints. San Antonio's action angered the mayor of New Orleans calling their intentions as shameful and disrespectful to the team's fans who have supported them for decades despite losing most of their games. But Saints' owner Tom Benson countered that New Orleans may never be a viable location for the NFL after what have happened and that options were suggested for a possible relocation and recruitment of the franchise. Rumors has it that Benson was planning to void his lease agreement by declaring the Louisiana Superdome unusable for home games.

But the NFL strongly wants the team to stay in Louisiana because it has been there since the late 60's and they are doing all the necessary negotiations to keep the team there. A lot of people have approached team owner Benson in the midst of the Katrina relocation controversy expressing their interest in buying the team to keep them in Louisiana but Benson had no intentions of selling the team. Instead, he handed down the control to his granddaughter.

In February 2006, the NFL announced that the Superdome will reopen September of the same year after undergoing repairs. The preseason games of the year though were played elsewhere but rest is assured that the Saints and the NFL were staying in Louisiana for the long term. Fall of 2006 marked the permanent start of the New Orleans Saints playing their home games at the Superdome.

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