By Mike Detillier / Sports Illustrated
In 2003, then WWL Radio Sports Director, Buddy Diliberto, spoke to me about obtaining as much information as possible on how New Orleans got an NFL team.
Diliberto first covered the beginning of getting a professional football team in the newspaper business and then covered the New Orleans Saints on television and the radio.
We both went to a host of different sources to get the behind the scenes information for the book, but in early 2005 Diliberto passed away, and I put our information away.
In this nine-part series on "How New Orleans got an NFL Team," I will give you the information from a host of sources. Mainly the most vital piece to get the New Orleans Saints was Dave Dixon. Dixon worked behind the scenes to place a team in New Orleans, and later he became the Father of the Louisiana Superdome.
PART 3
This report is directly from our interviews with Dave Dixon...
With not being able to land the Dallas Texans/now, the Kansas City Chiefs, Dave Dixon and the committee to bring professional football to New Orleans started to lay the groundwork on getting preseason games played in Tulane Stadium.
“We wanted to prove to the NFL that we could support an NFL team in New Orleans, and our only way to do this was to make an impressive showing with pre-season games,” Dixon said. “In 1963, we were able to land a doubleheader exhibition event. It was only the second time in NFL history that the NFL had a doubleheader format. We got the Dallas Cowboys to play the Detroit Lions a How New Orleans Got an NFL Team…" Dave Dixon
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