Mike Florio ,
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Sains owner Gayle Benson won’t be firing long-time G.M. Mickey Loomis. She also won’t be selling the Saints, or the NBA’s Pelicans.
“Let me be clear about this,” Benson said in an interview with Jeff Duncan of the New Orleans Times-Picayune , via Sports Business Journal . “ The teams are not for sale . That’s in capital letters. I want everybody to know the teams are not for sale. I get tired of people asking me [if they’re for sale]. I’m going to turn 79 in January, but I’m pretty healthy. I hear that people want to talk to me about buying the team. I’m like, well, that’s a waste of my time. That’s not going to happen. And people need to calm down about the team moving.”
That said, Benson restated her long-term plans for the teams.
“It remains that when I die, both teams will be sold to the highest bidder and those proceeds will be used 100 percent to improve this community,” she said.
While it’s a great gesture that the proceeds will be used to improve the New Orleans community, the citizens of the community are going to want to keep the team. And the highest bidder may decide that the purchase price can be better realized by taking the team to a bigger market that will create greater revenue.
Perhaps there will be a term in the sale that makes it impossible (or at a minimum ridiculously expensive) to move the team out of town. Regardless, there’s no way the teams will be sold — which means there’s no way the teams will be moved — for during Gayle Benson’s lifetime.
Big Shield combines gambling, pro football, and the mob into a cautionary tale regarding inside information, and the dangers that come from selling it.
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