The New Orleans Saints may be playing some home games outside of their city this season.
Saints spokesman Greg Bensel confirmed Tuesday that the team has had discussions with LSU about potentially playing home games at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge. The city of New Orleans is not allowing the Saints to host any fans at games in the Superdome, but Baton Rouge would be more accommodating.
“LSU has been gracious and enthusiastic regarding hosting our future games and we very much appreciate their partnership,” Bensel said, via ESPN’s Adam Schefter. “We have also discussed the possibility of moving our home games to LSU with the NFL and they are aware of our exploring this option. Obviously, our overwhelming preference is to play our games in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome with partial fan attendance but there has been no indication from the city on when, or if, this might be approved.”
One of the issues the Saints have faced with regard to hosting fans is the Superdome’s status as an indoor venue. Playing games at LSU would mitigate some of the risk. According to the CDC’s guidelines on attending sporting events, outdoor events are significantly safer to attend than ones hosted indoors.
Moving games outside would also probably tamp down on the shots about piped-in crowd noise. We’ll see.
