Saints’ Place Is in the Home

They need football in La. more than we need football in L.A.

Amid more hints that the NFL could return to Los Angeles, the New Orleans Saints are just another question mark in an uncertain future for the state of Louisiana.

A flooded New Orleans won’t be livable for months. It could take at least a year for the hurricane-damaged Superdome to be fixed, if it’s deemed worth saving. For now, the city is practically empty by mayoral order.

If there’s going to be a new New Orleans some day, the Saints should be a part of it -- even if it means losing money. This is the NFL’s chance to show its commitment to community service goes beyond taping a few United Way commercials.

The league can give the region’s battered tourism and convention industry a boost by awarding New Orleans the next available Super Bowl in 2010. (I’d take a debilitated Big Easy over next year’s site, Detroit.) The NFL could use its G3 loan program to kick in $150 million toward repairing the Superdome or building a new stadium.

The Saints could bring jobs back to the devastated area. But economists say it’s not about the money, it’s about the psychological effects.

“I don’t think there’s anything special about the potential economic contribution that the Saints would make more valuable,” said Andrew Zimbalist, professor at Smith College and author of several sports economics books. “There is another element, and that element is that sports teams very often do bring a city together in a cultural and social way.”

Jim Mora, the former Saint coach, said, “It’s hard for me to imagine New Orleans without the Saints there. They’re part of the culture, part of the community.”

The league needs to help the Saints help the city, even if it means the rest of the owners subsidizing them through red-number years. The Saints are doing the rest of the NFL a favor just by playing this year -- including a “home” game against the New York Giants in Giants Stadium -- to preserve the integrity of the schedule and season. They’re owed a return.

For now, the Saints have relocated to San Antonio, where eager politicians and business leaders already are talking about keeping the team there permanently.

There has yet to be a first-hand, on-the-record account from the Saints that they want to move. But there hasn’t been an official declaration of their intent to stay in New Orleans either. The best Saint owner Tom Benson could do was a written statement that “the Saints look forward to serving as a leader in the rebuilding and revitalization of our great community,” which is something they could accomplish by sending checks from Texas.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said it’s not the time to discuss the Saints’ future.

“We’re dealing with a lot of immediate priorities in terms of helping the Saints, the relief effort, where are the Saints going to play their home games this season,” Aiello said. Long-term plans are “not relevant to what we need to accomplish right now: To help the Saints and find a place for the Saints to play.”

Ultimately, that place could possibly be Los Angeles. I don’t want our city to steal the Saints. I don’t even want an expansion team if the Saints move to San Antonio and New Orleans doesn’t have a team to call its own.

“That sentiment may be there,” said Mark Ridley-Thomas, the state assemblyman who has long sought to bring an NFL team to the Coliseum. “However, when people come to realize that the Saints might have been in the hunt anyway, there’s no news in the fact the Saints were in the hunt. The only news is that they may have gone to the head of the list because of the circumstances in which they find themselves.

“They may recommit themselves to New Orleans just on the strength of what has taken place. On the other hand, that might prove to be more daunting than the circumstances under which they had originally been confronted.”

Let’s face it: NFL football means more to New Orleans than L.A.

“While [a team] would be valuable to L.A., there’s a lot to do out there,” said Brian Goff, an economics professor at Western Kentucky. “An NFL team in a small pond, whether it stays or leaves, it’s going to have a bigger impact.”

Life in L.A. has been fine since the Rams and Raiders left in 1995. We’ve had a decade of blackout-free Sundays, with the best games televised to this market every week. Home prices haven’t exactly suffered.

Now there are strong signs that the NFL wants back in.

After years of disparaging remarks about the Coliseum from league owners, the league will feature it in a series of promos this fall, and it will serve as the backdrop for a season-opening kickoff concert tonight.

“The message is becoming less and less mixed,” Ridley-Thomas said. “And that is the NFL is clearly intent on returning to Los Angeles. They are becoming increasingly clear that the venue of choice is the Coliseum. I think that’s what’s being communicated here.”

USC proved that fans will come to the Coliseum even in its current state as long as the home team is winning. The Trojans pulled an average crowd of 85,229 last year (a Pacific 10 record) on their way to back-to-back national championships.

Meanwhile, a bill to provide state-funded infrastructure improvements to the Coliseum area in conjunction with private stadium renovations is up for ratification Sept. 14, and the Coliseum Commission plans to make a presentation to the NFL at the owners’ meetings next month.

At a news conference for the kickoff concert Tuesday, Phil Gaurascio, NFL senior vice president of marketing, said he hoped to be back in Los Angeles “in an official capacity in the future with a lot more things to say.”

The only thing I want to hear the NFL say is it’s staying in New Orleans come hell or high water. Come to think of it, the city’s already been through both. Don’t make it suffer any further.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Adande, go to latimes.com/Adande.