Saints Seek a New Course

The New Orleans Saints, displaced by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, are weighing contingency plans in the likely event that the Superdome will be unusable this NFL season.

The club already has temporarily moved its headquarters to San Antonio, where players will begin practicing at the Alamodome next week. It is possible that stadium could be used for the Saints’ Sept. 18 home opener, and perhaps for the rest of the season. The Saints and the NFL also are exploring the possibility of playing in Baton Rouge, La., or Jackson, Miss. There have even been preliminary discussions about the Saints using Reliant Stadium in Houston, home field of the Texans.

“Ideally, we’d like to stay as close to our fans as possible,” Saints’ director of media relations Greg Bensel said Wednesday. “But we understand that there are more pressing priorities than football right now.”

The NFL on Wednesday announced plans to donate $1 million to the American Red Cross to assist victims of the hurricane, and the Raiders have sponsored a blood drive in Oakland before tonight’s exhibition game against the Saints. The Green Bay Packers flew to Nashville on Wednesday for an exhibition game, and brought with them a plane loaded with generators and other emergency supplies.

Among other sports-related efforts to aid victims: the New York Yankees donated $1 million to the Red Cross; the University of Florida will give proceeds ($75,000) from its pay-per-view telecast against Wyoming on Saturday to the Red Cross; the NBA players’ association said it would help deliver supplies to the hardest-hit areas, led by Chicago Bull guard Chris Duhon, a native of Slidell, La.; and Baron Davis, who played for the New Orleans Hornets for three seasons, donated $50,000 to the Red Cross’ disaster relief fund.

On Monday, after the storm had passed through the New Orleans area but before water breeched the levees, it seemed reasonable that the Superdome could be ready for the team’s home opener against the New York Giants. Now, however, the city is 80% under water, energy might not be restored for a month or more, and Mayor Ray Nagin said the death toll could climb into the thousands. Authorities say it could be as long as four months before evacuees are allowed back into the city.

Meanwhile, at the Superdome, authorities on Wednesday began evacuating thousands of flood victims who had taken refuge in that stadium and busing them to the Houston Astrodome, which has been transformed into a shelter. In a statement, Nagin said that Doug Thornton, a regional vice president for the company that manages the Superdome, told him it would be “very, very difficult” for the Saints to play home games there this season.

The Saints, who practiced at San Jose State this week, will leave for San Antonio after tonight’s game in Oakland. The team has given the players the weekend off to allow them to reconnect with their families.

“Our plan is to stay in San Antonio until further notice, until our families, players and football-operations people can get back into the city,” said Bensel, whose team opens the regular season Sept. 11 at Carolina.

The most likely scenario is the Saints will play their home games at the Alamodome, which has a seating capacity of 66,000 and was built partly in hopes of luring an NFL team. Tom Benson, owner of the Saints, made his fortune as a car dealer in San Antonio.

The Alamodome is a more likely temporary solution than Baton Rouge, where long-planned renovation work is being completed on LSU’s Tiger Stadium. LSU postponed its Saturday season opener against North Texas because the campus has been designated by the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness as a major emergency evacuation center with its basketball arena and field house serving as medical triage units.

The Tigers plan to open the season at home on Sept. 10 against Arizona State. LSU has an open date Sept. 17 and conceivably could play host to the Saints’ opener a day later.

Asked whether Los Angeles is being considered as a temporary home for the Saints, Bensel said: “There’s no L.A. alternative. Not in our book.”

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy confirmed that L.A. wasn’t in the league’s plans as a temporary site either.

The Saints have been considered among the leading candidates to permanently relocate to the L.A. area, either at the Coliseum, Rose Bowl or in Anaheim. Benson has long battled with elected officials in Louisiana over the condition of the Superdome and the size of cash payments to keep the franchise in New Orleans. And the NFL has identified returning to the L.A. market -- either with a relocated or expansion franchise -- as a top priority.

It is rare but not unprecedented for the NFL to reschedule or relocate games as a result of a natural disaster. A game in Miami between the Dolphins and Steelers was moved to a night game last season because of Hurricane Ivan. A year earlier, a Monday night game between the Dolphins and Chargers was moved to Tempe, Ariz., because of wildfires in San Diego.

In 1989, the league moved a game between the Patriots and 49ers from Candlestick Park to Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto after the Bay Area earthquake damaged Candlestick.

Three years later, the NFL postponed for six weeks a game between New England and Miami because of damage from Hurricane Andrew.

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Associated Press contributed to this report.