ESPN’s Chris Mortensen has reported that the Saints have probably played their last game in New Orleans. The city is seen as a struggling small market and there were talks of the Saints moving even before Hurricane Katrina. The Saints will probably play next season in San Antonio with a possible move to Los Angeles on the horizon.
Since the Rams and Raiders left, the NFL has been dying to put a franchise in the country’s second biggest market, but the city wasn’t able to get its act together in recent years and lost out to Houston for the league’s 32nd (and possibly final) team. Now the city is the first to be mentioned whenever a franchise is thought to be moving. As a SoCal resident (living in Orange County), I’d like to see a team relocate either to Anaheim or to a site somewhere along the LA County and Orange County border. It’s a sad situation, but given all the other entertainment possibilities in the area, I think residents of both counties need to have access to the team in order for the NFL to thrive in Southern California. And they need to do what the Browns did when they moved to Baltimore – change their nickname. Somehow, the LA Saints doesn’t sound quite right, unless you’re trying to be ironic.
