I think you may be onto something, Dude. We have all been watching the rosy picture of the Benson family empire progressively unravel before our eyes, the past couple of years.

To me the biggest red flag that something was seriously wrong with ownership at the level above the coaches, was that ridiculous 13-and-a-half foot bronze statue of Benson they put in Champions Square outside of the Dome. The statue features a 4-foot tall granite base and a 9-and-a-half foot bronze sculpture of Benson hoisting the Lombardi Trophy. It weighs 1,500 pounds while the granite base is five tons.

And apparently the Saints & Pelicans surprised Benson with this monstrous thing, as a present to him? Using his own money? Oh please. Somebody has got to be using that thing for jockeying for position or currying favor behind the scenes. It just reeks of dysfunction. Even Loomis was surprised by it.

I mean, this is just my opinion. They raised MY ticket prices, then spent it to put that crazy thing up, and then sure enough the team on the field started to slide after that....

In general I think there should be a rule that an owner can't have a giant 13-foot statue of themself at the entrance to the stadium, unless they either (a) built the stadium themselves with their own money, or else (2) they got at least 3 Lombardis in their time. Lots of owners have won several more than Benson, and they don't have statutes of themselves on the grounds put up by goodness knows who, family or underlings from their organization.

Robert Kraft's teams have been to the playoffs 16 times in 21 years. Al Davis won won 13 division championships, one AFL championship, & three Super Bowls. Pat Bowlen owned the Broncos for 30 years, and oversaw just five losing seasons the whole time. The Rooney family has practically got a whole closet full of old Lombardis from over the years.

I like Benson okay, but those are the kinds of owners who really deserve a big freaking statue of themselves, outside the stadium as the fans file in, in my opinion. Not one Saints fan I know is really super "into" that statue being there, the way the family and whoever paid for it, is "into" it being there.