NFL

No place to go but up

The New Orleans Saints are without a home, but not heart and will to survive the devastating aftermath.

By JOANNE KORTH
Published September 7, 2005

	[AP photo]
	Brian Reaux, left, holds his 2-year-old brother, Cyrus, as Saints wide receiver Michael Lewis autographs his T-shirt at a shelter in San Antonio.

The wings of the plane dipped first to the left, then to the right. Passengers on the commercial flight Sunday out of Tampa pressed foreheads to tiny windows, stood in the aisle, leaned over empty seats to see the city below.

What was left of it.

"That's the Superdome right under us," the pilot announced.

In the plane's last row, Dwight Smith squinted through the scratched pane. The Superdome. The building in which he was supposed to play football games for the Saints this fall, now a fetid symbol of death and degradation in New Orleans.

The plane leveled off, leaving passengers to wonder whether the queasiness in their stomachs was a result of the side-to-side sightseeing tour or the unthinkable sights.

"All I saw was water," said Smith, a defensive back who spent the past weekend in Tampa, where he still owns a home after four seasons with the Bucs. "And I felt like I couldn't be looking at the right thing, because they didn't say the whole place was underwater. If it's anything what it looked like from the air, everything is underwater."

One week after Hurricane Katrina tore into Louisiana and Mississippi, the future of the Saints franchise is as murky as the water flowing through its city's streets. So many questions - Where will the team play its home games? Where will players' children attend school? - so few satisfying answers.

As evacuation stories go, the Saints' does not begin to compare to the horrific tales of suffering from what has been called this nation's worst natural disaster. But the games will go on, and the situation the team finds itself in as it prepares for Sunday's opener at NFC division opponent Carolina is not conducive to winning.

Smith's flight landed in sun-baked San Antonio, the team's base of operations for the 2005 season, one state and some 500 miles west of New Orleans. He collected his suitcase from the baggage carousel and walked to the curb to seek transportation to a downtown hotel, home for the next few weeks.

"You've got everybody around here preaching that we can make this a special season by doing some things nobody really expected us to do," Smith said. "It's going to be tough. Hopefully we can make it special. Hopefully we can blend and put all this behind us. But expecting us to do anything great is huge."

In San Antonio, the first practice Monday required four bus rides. From the team hotel to the Alamodome, where players changed in the locker room. From the Alamodome to a practice field at a high-school sports complex 10 minutes away. From the field, sweaty and smelly, back to the Alamodome for showers. From there to the hotel.

Practice was sluggish.

Meeting rooms were located in the city's convention center, a two-block walk from the hotel, though coach Jim Haslett hoped to move them to the Alamodome by next week. A sheet of yellow paper taped to a concrete wall designated the Saints locker room. Another with an arrow pointed the way to the weight room, not yet fully stocked.

"I would love to get in the hot tub right now and get in the cold tub and get my legs back," receiver Joe Horn said after Monday's practice, the first after three days off. "But you know what? I'm sure there's a lot of people that would love to have their homes. They would love to see their little brother walk through the door.

"What the New Orleans Saints are going through on the football field is a cakewalk. There should be no problems for us. Nobody should complain. Who gives a d---?"

During his off weekend, Horn, perhaps known best for pulling a cell phone out of goal post padding to celebrate a touchdown, drove to the Astrodome in Houston, a shelter for more than 10,000 evacuees. He hugged children and played catch. He sat on stiff cots and listened to people's incredible stories.

"I was sad at the beginning because I didn't know what to expect from our fans," said Horn, entering his sixth season with the Saints. "Leaving there, I was happy. I didn't realize until I left there the people want us to play football. They want us to stay close. They kept asking, "Joe, are you going to be close enough for us to come see?' "

If there were any doubt the Saints would play for a higher purpose this season, a few hours spent interacting with evacuees Sunday at KellyUSA, a shelter housing more than 1,000 on the grounds of a former Air Force base in San Antonio, was proof of the healing power the Saints possess. Nearly a quarter-million people have been transported to Texas.

"It was humbling," said Wayne Gandy, a 6-foot-4, 315-pound tackle. "When some of them told the stories, some of the horrific things that were going on in the convention center (in New Orleans), it sounded like a movie they went to see."

Women dying giving birth. Bodies pushed into the corner. Toilets overflowing.

Watching it on TV was one thing, but actually walking into the shelter and seeing thousands of people sleeping on 6-by-3 cots was a life-altering encounter.

"We're just uncomfortable. They're displaced," Gandy said. "They have no connections, no money. They'll be in that warehouse until New Year's, at least, unless they have family to come get them."

The first person players saw was an elderly man wearing a Saints T-shirt and huge, shiny Saints belt buckle. He turned out to be family. Lester Vallet Sr. was a former Saints groundskeeper from 1967-90 whose son, Lester Jr., works for the team.

General manager Mickey Loomis took Vallet Sr. back to the hotel to await his son's arrival. The belt buckle was a gift from former coach Bum Phillips that Vallet Sr., 82, wears every day, as evidenced by his attire at Monday's practice.

Return specialist Michael Lewis, a New Orleans native, cannot imagine the Saints calling anywhere else home. But after passing through security checkpoints last weekend to check on more than two dozen family members, including grandparents who rode out the storm in their home, he knows it will be a long time before his city recovers.

"It was a ghost town," he said.

When Lewis went to the Saints facility in Metairie to get his car, Federal Emergency Management Agency had turned it into a command center. He saw team staff members hurriedly packing equipment to take to San Antonio.

"It's going to be a hard year," Lewis said. "But you've got to do what you've got to do. I'm grateful I've got a job. There are people who have to move who don't have anything. They have to uproot and go somewhere else and try to find a job and start their whole lives over. That hurts just to think about it."

With the Superdome in disarray - Katrina's winds ripped two holes in the curved roof - the team has three options for relocating its home games: the LSU campus in Baton Rouge, located 80 miles northwest of New Orleans; the Alamodome in their newly adopted city; and the stadiums of their opponents, an unappealing scenario of playing 16 true road games.

The solution likely will be a combination of the three. Scheduling conflicts at the Alamodome prevent it from being the complete answer. While NFL officials hesitate to stress the Gulf Coast region as it tries to cope, they recognize the goodwill a Saints game could generate in the state of Louisiana.

So far, the only certainty is that the "home opener" scheduled for Sept. 18 against the Giants will be played Sept. 19 at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, part of a Monday Night Football double-header, a league decision that irks the Saints.

"I think we owe it to the state and to the region to play a couple games back in Baton Rouge, if we can," Haslett said.

It's possible the Saints will never play in New Orleans again. There are reports owner Tom Benson, who has business ties to San Antonio, wants his to be the third NFL franchise in Texas, joining the Cowboys in Dallas and Texans in Houston.

San Antonio, its arena currently home to the NBA's Spurs, is believed to be quietly wooing Benson with an incentives package that includes a guarantee from the private sector of capacity crowds of 65,000.

Benson declined to comment.

"That's the furthest thing from any of our minds," Loomis said. "Our commitment to New Orleans is stronger than ever. We want to be leaders in the reconstruction, revitalization of New Orleans. In the immediate future, we're representing Louisiana and the city of New Orleans.

"I don't know how important a football game is, probably not very, but if we can uplift anyone with just the fact that we're out there, much less playing as hard as we're going to play, obviously that's worthwhile to us."

The Saints will provide accommodations for players and staff for three weeks, after which all must find places to live in San Antonio for the remainder of the season. Several players planned to rent, a few to buy. Some coaches planned to turn makeshift offices at the Alamodome into makeshift living quarters, to sleep on cots.

The Saints did this last year, when they evacuated to San Antonio for three days when Hurricane Ivan threatened. This time, their stay will last much longer. Eventually, they will develop a daily routine. The Saints will settle in for a trying season knowing all of the Gulf Coast and much of the nation is watching with anticipation.

And hope.

[Last modified September 7, 2005, 01:02:19]