Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta is interested in buying the Saints

I live 3 hours North of Hattiesburg. Way more than half of the NFL fans I know (and the nfl tags, stickers, etc I see in vehicles) are Saints fans.

After that there are Cowboys fans, then fans of various teams that had MS players as successful stars (49ers, Packers, Giants, Bears for examples). There are sheetbird fans here, too. Bless their hearts. There’s a big group of Titans fans up in NE MS. Oh and Steeler fans.

With most of these fan groups it’s some combination of the teams past success (Cowboys, 49ers, Steelers), MS native players (Rice, Payton, Favre, Eli, and now Dak) and location of the team (Cowboys, Titans, sheetbirds). And transplants from out of state. I have some good friends in the Jackson metro from Ohio. They ride or die (mostly die) with the Browns (and all Cleveland teams - they’re insufferable when it comes time “THE Ohio State University” and anti SEC noise)

You’ve also still got your bandwagon fans. I know 2 people that were Chiefs fans before Reid became their coach, much less drafting Mahomes. There are still Patriots fans.

Of course the further away you get from NO the number of fans decreases. That’s simple logic. But you can be assured the biggest group of NFL fans across MS are Saints fans. When WDBD-40 aired that Cowboys game last year over the Saints game, I know their programming director got threats.

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Regardless, while I don’t think this guy is likely to get the team new ownership is something we need to be thinking about. There are only a handful of people in the region that could outright buy the team without other investors. Graves (Raisin Canes) in LA is the first one that comes to mind. In MS there are the Duff brothers but I don’t think they have enough.

If it’s mainly one person or family it’s likely going to be somebody outside of Louisiana for sure. I just hope they have enough sense to not try to locate.