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By Jeff Duncan
Forty years ago Wednesday in a packed conference room at the Pontchartrain Hotel, a seismic shift occurred in the New Orleans sports landscape.
On a warm and sunny afternoon along St. Charles Avenue, reporters and photographers scrambled for position in the hotel's cramped Patio Room, where National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle stepped to the podium and uttered 17 words that forever altered the local sports scene: "Professional football has voted a franchise to the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans . . ."
Full Story - Times-Picayune
