Sorry for this, folks. Today, I’m revisiting the Chargers’ relocation decision made by Dean Spanos and family.
Why? The NFL club will return this week for two days of training camp at the University of San Diego.
Here’s my first of two points: Financially speaking, taking the Chargers to Greater Los Angeles was a sensible move.
The Chargers had no good shot of landing in the East Village next to Petco Park, the Spanos’ first choice for a new stadium location. And a new Chargers home in Mission Valley, late in a fitful process that had spanned many years, seemed a longshot.
If you want to blame the Spanoses for playing a role in the local options being so meager, that’s not unfair. After all, they’d owned the team for decades. A fat stadium subsidy might’ve been theirs had they been as clever as Padres leaders John Moores and Larry Lucchino, who, to be fair, had the advantage of 81 home dates.
Go back to Alex Spanos, who bought control of the Chargers in 1984, if you want to argue that the team could’ve built more political capital in town.
But just know that other powerful people in San Diego played a role, too, in the franchise running its course here. California financing had dried up. Meanwhile, other state governments were dishing out huge subsidies toward NFL venues.
Key point: NFL power brokers demand a suitable football venue and are very good at getting it — sooner or later, and somewhere.
Not impressed by stadium prospects in San Diego, NFL sharps created a sure thing for the Spanoses 120 miles north by assuring the Chargers a spot in the Kroenke Dome that Rams owner and megabillionaire Stan Kroenke would build in Inglewood.
The Chargers would pay $1 a year in rent per the terms of a 20-year lease negotiated by club counsel Mark Fabiani. They would pay nothing to build the 70,200-seat venue. They got a series of options to extend the lease.
Though Dean Spanos and family, uninvited, were trundling into Greater L.A.’s crowded sports market like Cousin Eddie showing up in a rickety RV, the immense population of Los Angeles afforded the team large margins for error at the gate and in TV ratings. (Hence the team’s average attendance per game ranging from 69,700 to 70,240 in Inglewood.)
Even with the $550 million relocation fee, it likely wasn’t a tough financial decision.
My second point is that while money means a lot to an NFL club, it’s not everything.
The Spanoses and the NFL would create an emotional price by yanking the team out of San Diego.
That cost wasn’t small. Even though many San Diegans would make goo-goo eyes at the L.A. Bolts when they appeared on their televisions and computer screens, the Spanoses no doubt knew that they were breaking the hearts of thousands of locals who’d supported the team with their money and their time.
A local I met this week at little Mission Bay Golf Course expressed his ire well, in between my slices and hooks.
“If they had moved the Chargers to Omaha, I would still root for them,” he hollered. “But they moved them to Los Angeles, of all places.” Then he groaned.
NFL training camp begins a long football journey intended to culminate in a Super Bowl victory.
Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh, who began his head-coaching career at the University of San Diego, where his second team will work out Tuesday and Wednesday, was asked by Rich Eisen last year why he works so hard — 100-hour work weeks are common in his trade — despite having won a recent national title with Michigan.
“It’s like being dipped in magical waters,” Harbaugh, 61, said of finishing atop the football mountain.
If the Los Angeles Chargers indeed win a Super Bowl someday, it will indeed be a thrill for many folks.
But if that Super Bowl winner were the San Diego Chargers, who meant so much to generations of fans here, can anyone doubt the emotional reward would be far greater for almost everyone involved, including the Spanoses?
If the Chargers win the 2025 AFC championship game, will fans fill the fake-grass, very corporate Kroenke Dome for a spontaneous pep rally, as some 60,000 San Diegans filled the old Mission Valley stadium to cheer Junior Seau, Bobby Ross, Stan Humphries, Leslie O’Neal and friends after they won the 1994 AFC title match in Pittsburgh?
Will downtown buildings in L.A. illuminate improvised lightning bolts, as happened in downtown San Diego?
Will massive, sprawling L.A. feel like a Chargers town, as it did in the era of “Air Coryell” and when teams featuring Hall of Famers LaDainian Tomlinson and Antonio Gates won four consecutive AFC West titles?
Seems pretty unlikely.
The San Diego Chargers winning a Super Bowl would’ve generated next-level euphoria.
As clever as NFL power brokers are, they weren’t able to ensure the Los Angeles Chargers will be embraced likewise if Harbaugh leads them to magical waters.
Originally Published: