WHY IS GOODELL DEFENDING THE SAINTS AS THEY PROTECT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH?
It’s dangerous when an NFL franchise offers media assistance in a sexual abuse scandal — owner Gayle Benson is a friend of Archbishop Gregory Aymond — which demands serious attention from the league
Football is considered a religion in the Deep South, but protecting the Catholic Church from a sexual abuse scandal is a disgrace for the New Orleans Saints. The stories broke Monday with the National Football League in town, hosting an event known as Super Bowl LIX. That is close to a LIE, if you consider a priest who was defrocked as a deacon when accused of raping an 8-year-old boy.
The league thought it was positioning the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles as America’s biggest sports event, replacing last season’s game and others in the past. Instead, commissioner Roger Goodell answered questions about 300 emails that exposed Greg Bensel, the Saints’ communications boss, as a leading figure who promoted upbeat media coverage and tried to help the local archdiocese and Archbishop Gregory Aymond. Bensel? Didn’t we write him to supply game credentials in the press box?
Jesus.
And who encouraged Bensel to script written documents for interviews? She would be team owner, Gayle Benson, a friend of Aymond and a dutiful patron of his church. Imagine allowing a public-relations man, who should be writing nice releases about quarterback Derek Carr, to save the archbishop for more than a year. Benson should have removed herself and the franchise from the disaster when a list of predatory priests was made public. Did Saints executives see the list and remove certain priests? Did team president Dennis Lauscha help Aymond with possible media questions?
At one point, Bensel wrote to Lauscha about Aymond: “He is doing well. That is our message, that we will not stop here today.” The Associated Press published that quote and others — the Saints never were serious about a “minimal” presence in the scandal. They used lawyers to keep the emails secret.
“This is disgusting,” said state Rep. Mandie Landry, D-New Orleans. “As a New Orleans resident, taxpayer and Catholic, it doesn't make any sense to me why the Saints would go to these lengths to protect grown men who raped children. All of them should have been just as horrified at the allegations.”
Goodell appeared in the afternoon to address the league’s current state. Benson sat about 10 feet away. “Mrs. Benson and the Saints are very involved in this community and they are great corporate citizens so Mrs Benson takes all these matters seriously,” the commissioner said. “I’m confident that they are playing nothing more than a supportive role to be more transparent."
Why should he be confident? This is not an issue he should sweep under private parties in the Big Easy. Never mind if the city is petrified after a terrorist, in a truck, killed 14 on Bourbon Street in the wee hours of New Year’s Day. Nonetheless, the league is secure about a new security plan.
“We have re-assessed and stressed and stress-tested our timing, our communication verticals, our contingency measures, and our emergency response plans, multiple times over the past several weeks,” NFL security boss Cathy Lanier said.
Said Kristi Noem, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: “This Super Bowl exemplifies how we come together to safeguard our traditions … to make sure the public is well-informed and it gets the chance to celebrate something that’s very special to us to our culture to our people and to our families, but we also do it in a way that is reacted to what we see as the curved environment that we see in the world today. The world is a much more dangerous place, but here in the homeland, we are safe and I will tell you that right now we have no specific, credible threats to this event at the Super Bowl, which I think should give us all, um, a sense of our security, but also knowing that we will adjust that as needed.”
The skies certainly are safe, right? Pacific Palisades sure is safe, right?
No one is surprised about game tickets decreasing in value after last year’s game in Las Vegas. Should a fan worry about his life in the French Quarter? What happens if he or she enters a Catholic church?
Goodell was busy for 48 minutes. How will the league respond to President Trump’s reversion in DEI policies? “We got into diversity efforts because we felt it was the right thing for the National Football League, and we're going to continue those efforts because we've not only convinced ourselves, I think we've proven to ourselves that it does make the NFL better,” he said. "We're not in this because it's a trend to get into it or a trend to get out of it. Our efforts are fundamental in trying to attract the best possible talent into the National Football League both on and off the field.”
And claims, among fans and media, that officials are favoring the Chiefs? “A lot of those theories are things that happen in social media and they get a new life,” Goodell said. “I understand that. I think it reflects a lot of the fans’ passion and is a reminder for us on how important officiating is. I think the men and women who are officiating the NFL are outstanding. We have the highest possible standards. It’s a ridiculous theory for anyone who might take it seriously. But at the end of the day it’s something we have to work at, how do we make our officiating better.”
In his mind, the NFL and professional football are in great shape. Never true. Why would he have Gayle Benson sitting 10 feet away, as the global media fired away?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.