Saints deserved better treatment from NFL

The New Orleans Saints might have lost to the New York Giants in New Orleans if there had never been a Hurricane Katrina. Or they might have lost in San Antonio or Baton Rouge, La., or some neutral site if the NFL decided to play the game somewhere other than the Meadowlands.

But moving the Saints’ “home opener” to the home of their opponent was flat wrong, in part a result of the Northeast bias that permeates sports leagues and sports media. As someone asked when the decision was first made: “Would the NFL have switched the game to Cincinnati if the Saints were scheduled to play the Bengals?”

The answer is no.

Yes, the NFL is happy that the Monday night doubleheader earned $5 million for Katrina relief. But was that because the game was played at Giants Stadium? It could have been played anywhere and thousands of people still would have called the toll-free number that ran across the bottom of the screen, pledging their money to nameless operators or Hall of Fame football players.

No, the Saints won’t really have a home game this year. Even their games in Baton Rouge, where they at least will have their fans, will require travel, something they’ve been doing for nearly a month.

That’s not the fault of the NFL, which can do a lot of things but is as helpless as anyone else in the face of a natural disaster. What is the fault of the NFL was putting them into a hostile environment at the worst possible time.

The Saints left New Orleans before the Aug. 29 hurricane and have since been to San Jose, Calif., Oakland, Calif., San Antonio, Charlotte, N.C., San Antonio, East Rutherford, N.J., and back to San Antonio.

For the first two weeks, they seemed to block out the reality of their plight, channeling it in many cases to working with hurricane victims far less fortunate than they are.

But when they finally settled into San Antonio to prepare for the Giants, the numbness seemed to wear off and the difficulty of their nomadic life settled in. The physical and mental strain of worrying about loved ones and of finding homes, schools, food and transportation surely took its toll against the Giants – in the form of six turnovers if nothing else.

In typical coachspeak, Jim Haslett blamed the loss on his team’s errors and the superior play of the opponent.

But he also pointed out the farce of calling it a “home” game. So what if one end zone had “Saints” painted in it and the Giants had to wear white? The Giants dressed in their spacious locker room, while the Saints were confined to cramped visitors space and had to play before a loud pro-Giants crowd.

“To play it in Giants Stadium, to give them another home game and to put us in a situation where we couldn’t hear,” Haslett noted. “It wasn’t why we lost that game, but …”

The NFL’s rationale was that it wanted to stay out of the way of Katrina rescue efforts near New Orleans. Fine, but there are other large stadiums in the 1,839 miles between San Antonio and New York that could have accommodated the game.