Saints Ownership Battle Has Wider Implications for League-Ownership Balance

Head south about 1,500 miles from the hysteria around Deflategate, and the NFL is having problems in New Orleans that could impact the league for years to come.

New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson is embroiled in a legal battle between members of his family and his wife, Gayle, whom he married in 2004. The issue at hand is who will acquire ownership of the Saints upon Benson's death, or potentially even sooner. 

If ownership is wrested from Benson, it could spark a domino effect across the league that could set precedent as NFL ownership becomes an increasingly valuable commodity, owned almost entirely by a group of aging men who (as of a few years ago) have an average age of over 70.

Benson, 87, had a recent health scare after falling at an owners meeting last May, so the timing of the switching of his will isn't entirely random. To make matters worse, Jeff Duncan of NOLA.com reported that there has been a long rift between his wife and his adoptive granddaughter, Rita:

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What they didn't know was there was a rift brewing between Gayle and Rita, a reason the two were always on opposite sides of Tom in those sideline photo-ops. It wasn't just to gender-balance the portraits.

The two women can't stand each other. 

'Gayle tried to get along for some time, but eventually she gave up,' one source said. 'They were on speaking terms but rarely, if ever, talked to each other.

'In the end, it was pretty ugly on both sides.'

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Duncan later added:

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And Gayle sometimes referred to Rita as 'It' when the granddaughter was not around, sources said.

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Yikes!

Benson's family has been operating under the assumption that they were taking over control of the Saints for some time. When I say "operating," I truly do mean operating—Rita Benson LeBlanc has been the executive vice president of the organization. Her career started with the New Orleans Voodoo, a now-defunct arena football team owned by Benson. 

Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

LeBlanc was Arena League Executive of the Year before moving over to a bigger role with the Saints. 

In that respect, this isn't just an entitled party taking hypothetical future control of something from another entitled party. No, this is Benson and his wife wresting control away from the people who have been running the franchise's operations for some time. 

The challenge lodged by Benson's family states he doesn't have the faculties to make such a change, claiming that his mental health has been declining for years. Benson and his wife have countered that his grandchildren's evidence stems from his concussion issue last year. 

This is a bigger issue than it may seem. 

Sadly, the effects of age are a real and serious consequence of life for most of us, and it affects different people at different rates. Where one person may feel spry and mentally sharp into their 90s or well past their 100th birthday, another may start declining mentally far sooner.

It was just a few years ago that Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk wondered aloud if NFL ownership should have a mandatory retirement age:

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Last night on his Twitter page, long-time NFL exec Joe Browne offered up this observation:  'Helen Thomas is yet one more example why there should be mandatory retirement at age 85.'

Given that many of his past tweets reflect a wry sense of humor, we’re assuming that the remark was intended in jest.

...Given that the several NFL owners have migrated past their 85th birthdays and in light of the perception that Raiders owner Al Davis has lost his fastball due to age, Browne’s comment (where in jest or otherwise) makes us wonder whether some within the league office (and possibly some of the other owners) would prefer that the older owners surrender the captain’s chair sooner rather than later.

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That's just speaking of natural health. The potential effects of various diseases could have an even starker effect on the abilities of an NFL owner, robbing an otherwise brilliant football mind and businessman of his gifts far too soon.

The Denver Broncos have gone through this process as of late with Pat Bowlen, who recently resigned control of the organization and revealed he has Alzheimer's disease. There had been scattered rumors or innuendos for years about Bowlen, collected here by BroncoTalk, a fan blog. 

Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

Before Bowlen, it was Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis whose football acumen peaked years earlier than his death in 2011. Though no actual mental health issue was ever diagnosed, the game had clearly passed him by. There were certainly rumblings there as well, like Tim Kawakami of San Jose Mercury News saying Davis was "more lucid" in the beginning of this column, implying there were plenty of times he was less than lucid. 

Honestly, though, these are not isolated thoughts: Dallas Morning News columnist Tim Cowlishaw has said similar things about Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones. It was said about Detroit Lions former owner William Clay Ford, for whom senility barbs were exacerbated by his willingness to give complete control of the franchise over to Matt Millen and old anecdotes about incompetence earlier in life. 

Can you imagine an NFL landscape where any losing season becomes grounds for filing a suit declaring an owner incompetent? Ownership has been the last bastion of a fanbase's desire for change, and don't tell me that groups like angry Cleveland Browns fans or Oakland Raiders fans—even if just a small minority—wouldn't take opportunity to declare Jimmy Haslam or Mark Davis unfit to run a team even at their (comparatively) young ages. 

Who runs the NFL?

That's the difficult question here, which may be partially answered by courts in the Benson case. Though Roger Goodell and the NFL offices are the face of power many of us see, the ownership group is atop Goodell on the grand NFL organizational chart. However, it's not each owner individually, as Goodell has the power to punish an owner, as he did with Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. 

Thus, Goodell could potentially remove an owner from day-to-day operations and force him to set up longer-term change if he were deemed unfit. The owners, as a whole, could seek to remove another owner as well, if it were deemed best for the league. That's a bridge they're unlikely to cross unless the courts set that precedent. 

To draw the comparison again: All of this is incredibly more interesting and more widely relevant than the air pressure of some footballs. 

Depending on the outcome of this case, the Benson ruling could end up reshaping exactly what it means to own an NFL team and removing the ivory tower in which that immutable power has always been placed. 

Michael Schottey is an NFL National Lead Writer for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. Find more of his stuff on his archive page and follow him on Twitter.