ScottyRo

Without quoting that which I\'m referring to, I\'d like to add a few things.

It is true that the Saints generate money for the State. I never said otherwise. However, just as other businesses generate money for the state, the Saints should not be paid out of that money without a showing that they truly need it and that the team has done everything it could to avoid needing it.

I have said before that I want the payments from the State to Benson stopped. But I have also said that I\'d prefer that by way of tax cuts or whatever, Benson receive a benefit to keeping the Saints here.

I don\'t mean mean to be rude when I say it\'s a ridiculous statement to say that the Saints should be allowed to force the State to pay to the team money that is earned by the State through taxes in order to keep the team. It just is. Next we\'ll have all the conventioners wanting to do the same thing. (Conventions bring in lots more money than do the Saints.)

See, up here in the backwoods called Monroe, LA we had a company called State Farm that had a pretty big base of operations here. The short of it is that they decided to leave and it is going to be a huge negative impact for this city at tleast in the short term. That being so, I would object just as vehemently to Monroe or the State paying cash to State Farm in order to keep it here. Again, tax breaks or something that might equal the cash would be fine, but I don\'t see cash payments as being something beneficial.

I am from North Louisiana and I do take exception to the so-called bias. It\'s true that you can find people that don\'t give a whoot about the team or the city of N.O. But I think it\'s true of any city in the State - north or south - even N.O. However, I\'m going to further object to your using those people that you spoke to here as an argument against my exception to the north La bias since at least one of those characters seems to be of the dispicable kind. I don\'t know anyone that wishes (or openly wishes) that N.O. would have been destroyed. That particular person needs help and his/her opinion should be ignored.

Halo, you said that one of my comments seems to come from somebody that doesn\'t want this team to be on par with other NFL teams financially. The problem is, you can\'t tell me that the Saints are not on par with other teams. It just sounds like a logical conclusion because N.O. is an economically depressed area (along with most of the rest of the State), but that doesn\'t make it true. I suspicioun that it may be true to a degree but not nearly as badly as Benson wants us to believe so that he can get more money. He wont allow his books to be looked at and that tells me he\'s hiding something. If he were more open in showing how badly the team performs against the rest of the NFL, it might influence me a bit more to take a less opposing stance to helping him.

Maybe in the end an incentive based package would be best -even if it included cash payments. At least then we\'d know that he\'d likely be trying to win many games rather than just enough to appease us.

WhoDat

Well put Scotty. I agree almost entirely, except for the argument that there is no bias. My experience has been that there is, and it seems to be working here. However, the rationale for your position is solid, and I can\'t disagree.

chRxis

the saints ain\'t going nowhere... who would take \'em? i\'ll still be critiquing the NEW ORLEANS saints when i\'m 80 years old