Scooter Hobbs column: Benson gave as good as he took
Published 3:19 pm Monday, March 19, 2018
It was a day or two before the New Orleans Saints first-ever playoff game when a Shreveport writer and I showed up at the team’s headquarters to pick up game credentials and hopefully snag an interview or three.
The Saints headquarters in Metairie at the time was really nothing more than a motley jumble of old trailers scattered about, connected by spit and rust and baling wire around a nondescript practice field.
The joint could have used better signage, too.
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Danged if we could crack the code to find our way inside, although the parking lot suggested there were plenty of people home.
This door, that door, a look around the corner … no luck.
We were shaking knobs and knocking on yet another possibility, just about to give up on it too, when suddenly the door opened and we were let in.
It appeared to be a custodian to our rescue and, after getting quick directions to where we were headed, we barged past him self-importantly down a serpentined hallway.
We’d taken about 10 more steps before we realized we’d just brush-blocked our way, a little rudely as it were, past Tom Benson, the owner of the Saints’ empire.
Maybe it was casual Friday. But he sure didn’t look like the richest man in Louisiana that day.
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Our crass entrance didn’t seem to bother him.
Good thing, too. We were quickly lost again in the maze and somehow circled around and were face to face again.
This time he personally walked us to the media relations room, patient and friendly as could be with two guys who were a lot more humble and subdued than in the first meeting.
Of course, we weren’t negotiating with him.
That probably would have gone badly.
At the time, though, it seemed to fit. Benson then was probably at the height of his popularity — a regular guy from New Orleans who rose up from nothing to become enough of a multi-millionaire to buy the team when former playboy owner John Mecom Jr., grew tired of it.
Word on the streets was that Mecom would have sold the Saints to anybody, without regard to where they might want to move the team.
There weren’t a lot of people in Louisiana with the kind of spare cash it took to buy an NFL franchise even then, which when Benson got done negotiating was $70 million.
That would get you a couple of helmets and a luxury suite or two in today’s market.
It also seemed like a strange purchase for a guy who admitted he’d been too busy making money — in San Antonio more than New Orleans — to be much of a football fan.
But the “regular guy” sure seemed like a perfect fit in returning to his hometown, complete with the “Benson Boogie” and that twirling second-line umbrella after Saints victories, which started coming more often.
That popular image didn’t really last for the long haul, though, and it’s why so many in the state had mixed emotions by the time he passed away at the age of 90 on Thursday.
Never mind that the state of Louisiana usually came away bloodied from negotiations. The cute little guy with the umbrella wasn’t the same guy you’d meet in the Governor’s mansion.
For instance, Saints, Inc. on Airline Highway is now a modern complex that any SEC school would be proud of.
The difference, at least with Louisiana’s SEC school, is that LSU’s athletic department didn’t use any state funds to build theirs. Those monies were all self-generated.
The state, ever fearful of losing its Sunday football obsession, basically paid for its free-market NFL team’s luxury digs, along with many other benefits Benson negotiated over the years.
It’s at least part of the reason that the self-made multi-millionaire became a multi-billionaire.
And the thanks?
After Hurricane Katrina, at New Orleans’ lowest moment, Benson seemed determined to move the team to San Antonio and probably would have if then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue hadn’t stepped in (current Commissioner Roger Goodell, then the top assistant, did a lot of the behind-the-scenes heavy lifting).
Tagliabue may be the only person who outmaneuvered Benson.
But to Benson’s credit, he knew when he was beaten, and he seemingly spent the last 12 years rehabilitating his legacy.
It’s yet to be proven that New Orleans needs an NBA team, but when it looked the city might lose the Hornets, he stepped in and bought them too, even renaming them the Pelicans.
After Tagliabue kept the Saints in New Orleans — the NFL didn’t want the PR nightmare of abandoning a broken city — Benson jumped in with both feet to make them, finally, a consistent winner.
Mainly, he brought a Super Bowl trophy to a city and a state that thought it was pipe dream.
So Benson was good to Louisiana. But the state was pretty good to him, too.
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at shobbs@americanpress.com
New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson holds up the Super Bowl trophy Sept. 9, 2010, before the Saints’ NFL football season opener against the Minnesota Vikings in New Orleans.
