Tom Benson sat on a stool in a corner of an executive suite at the Superdome on the evening of Friday, Aug. 26, 2005.
As the owner of the team, he would shake the hand or nod politely to anyone who acknowledged him, but it was obvious he was not in a festive mood. First, the Saints, playing their second pre-season game of the year in the dome, were being blown out. He grimaced and grumbled as points piled up in the wrong direction leading to a 21-6 defeat by the Baltimore Ravens.
That game was a dismal moment preceding a dismal period in the franchise’s history. Neither Benson nor anyone else could have anticipated that the team would not play in the dome again for more than a year until Monday, Sept. 25, 2006, and that would be one of the team’s most festive and historic nights ever.
But that night against Baltimore, Benson was probably the loneliest person in the dome. More worrisome than the score was the news that earlier that day a tropical system that had been threatening the Florida gulf coast had turned and was headed toward New Orleans, and that it was going to be big – really big. Prospects for the upcoming season on the field were not looking good; but now the bigger concern was if there would be a stadium for the team to play in.
Sometimes in the late afternoon of the next day, the New Orleans region faced what might have been its worst news ever. The storm, now upgraded to a category five hurricane and named Katrina, was speeding toward the city as though it was targeted to the uprights of a goal post. Two days later, the levees that were supposed to protect the low-lying areas would break.
For the next few months, the Superdome would draw large crowds but not for the original reason. The building had been designated as a prime evacuation shelter. The stadium got badly battered.
For the Saints there was a different dome in their existence. The Alamodome in San Antonio was built in anticipation of attracting big time sports teams. Now the building at least had a temporary refugee NFL team, though San Antonio mayor Phil Hardberger made New Orleans fans nervous with his statements. He implied that his city would be a great permanent relocation site for the Saints. The fact that Tom Benson had car dealerships in San Antonio only fueled the speculation.
In the saga to follow there would be a hero. It was Paul Tagliabue, the NFL commissioner who insisted that the Saints would return to New Orleans. (He famously told that to a group of business leaders at a round-table meeting in New Orleans with Benson in attendance.) The Commissioner did not want the NFL to be seen as a business that would abandon its injured franchises.
And injured it was. During the regular season the Saints went 3-13, splitting their home games between the Alamodome and LSU’s Tiger stadium.
Overall, it was a dismal season as the people of south Louisiana were preoccupied with survival. The team was so uncharacteristically overlooked that there was little reaction when head coach Jim Haslett was fired and was replaced by a little known assistant head coach from the Dallas Cowboys named Sean Payton. Quarterback Aaron Brooks was released and there was another unfamiliar replacement, a former San Diego Chargers quarterback who had been slowed by a shoulder injury. His name was Drew Brees.
Saints fans would have their first chance to see the team again on that Sept. 25, 2006, game. If the event had a name, it could have been called “The Emotion Bowl.” Tagliabue had insisted that the team’s return home should be on Monday Night Football.
Only two other ingredients could have made the evening more dramatic; one was that the opposition would be the hated Atlanta Falcons (Tagliabue saw to that too) and the other was that the Saints would win. (That was out of the Commissioner’s hands.)
Early in the game a pair of hands that blocked a punt would set the course of the game. With the Falcons kicking from near their end zone, Steve Gleason, an obscure Saints safety would block the ball which deflected to the end zone where it was covered for a Saints touchdown. The team never looked back. Not confirmed, but probably true, was that the reverberations from the Superdome that night were felt on the moon.
Steve Gleason would become the subject of one of the most poignant stories in NFL history after he was diagnosed with ALS. There is a statue on the Superdome terrace of his breaking through a mountain of men to block that punt.
President John Kennedy had given the United States space program 10 years to get to the moon and return safely. Less probable was the Saints winning a Super Bowl within the time distance from that awful 2005 hurricane-challenged preseason game that Benson suffered through, and the breezy, unbelievable night of Feb. 7, 2010, in Miami when the Saints won it all.
Drew Brees was named the game’s MVP. Sean Payton was the NFL’s coach of the year. Tom Benson lived to lift the Super Bowl trophy.
Now, linked emotionally to the Katrina recovery, the Gleason statue at the Superdome is called “Rebirth.”
