San Diego’s Nick Canepa: “People Loved Chargers, Hated Owner”

September 6, 2021 Chargers News and Information

Chargers departure from San Diego Jan/2017

Published Jan. 15, 2017 in The San Diego Union Tribune (Nick Canepa) Read at your own risk! You might say why publish this?- it is old news, however, it is always good to never forget about the Chargers proud history in the City of San Diego. For your information, The San Diego Union Tribune is celebrating Nick Canepa’s 50 years in San Diego so this article was featured in the San Diego Union Tribune on Sunday Sept. 5th…If you loved the San Diego Chargers- You will understand, however, it is a very tough read!

I have buried family members.
I’ve seen great friends laid to rest.
I worked the morning of the PSA plane crash in North Park, horror that came a half-hour after the gleeful news that Don Coryell was returning to San Diego.
I’ve lived through wars and senseless tragedy and assassinations and mass suicides and terrorist threats and the remarkable devaluing of human life and skyscrapers falling to the ground.
The Chargers leaving for Los Angeles does not measure up.
But it doesn’t mean I’m not angry as hell after growing up with this franchise, listening to and writing this stadium crap over the past 15 years, always somehow, stupidly, I guess, thinking it would be resolved.
It’s a punch to the liver, a tremor to our foundation, to what we had become in part because of them. But it’s not tragic. It’s stupid. It’s uncaring blunt force business — bad business.
And unnecessary, except the NFL has become a great practitioner of the Seven Deadly Sins, and every nickel now is pinched until Jefferson’s nose bleeds.
The football team is gone and not returning. But we remain an NFL city. I don’t believe The League is going to forget us. The NFL wanted to remain here. And so it can come back. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not soon, but it should promise to try.
Because it can. Because it loves this place. Because The League’s lords know it works here. It’s a matter of doing it right, which the Spanoses didn’t — in addition to the inept, weak, myopic, frightened City Hall hash-slingers of this early millennium.
I really didn’t care or think about it much until now. But Dean Spanos, who took the cowardly route and crawled out of here like a thief in the night — and then roostered around the L.A. Basin like the grand marshal of the Rose Parade — should give up the Chargers’ good name and leave it here, as Art Modell did with the Browns when they fled to Baltimore.
The NFL should do a MacArthur, vow to return, and honor the thousands of loyal fans, like those out in front of the team’s facility tossing, burning and stomping on Chargers paraphernalia they cherished just a few moments before Dean’s stark, unfeeling, uncaring email announcement.
Roger Goodell should roust his leaders and apologize for what Spanos did (Dean hasn’t), how he handled this mess, and tell us we are not going to be forgotten.
This is not a populace that forgot its team. This is a great fan base that grew tired of the ineptness, on and off the field — and, near the end, the incredible belligerence of 2015, when Spanos and his stormtroopers stomped and relieved themselves on their faithful (and then expected them to vote in a new stadium a year later).
“I talked to Commissioner Goodell a lot during the past month,” Mayor Kevin Faulconer says. “He was disappointed in the outcome.”
But powerless to stop it, obviously. Roger’s bosses didn’t want this to happen, but I have it on good authority they grew sick of Spanos’ whining, and, also, while realizing Rams boss Stan Kroenke can’t stand Dean (and vice versa), pleaded with Stan, who needs Dean like he needs another billion, to just let the Chargers into his Inglewood digs and have done with it (without giving Dean more money).
It’s the owners’ problem as much as anybody’s, because they gave Spanos the option to leave after they threw him and his Carson plans under the moving van last year. They should have just told him to sit in the corner. Now they should see what they can do to make this right again.
They have a franchise in Jacksonville, for heaven’s sake? Not in San Diego, the eighth-largest city in America? Granted, there’s a lot of small-time here, but it would be great if someone with a spine and real money moved in.
I do not believe Dean has the wherewithal of a modern-day NFL owner. I know numbers crunchers who tell me that, given the stiff expansion fee he must pay, adding he’ll be playing in the StubHub Center closet for two seasons, he’ll be lucky to turn a profit in 10 years.
The value of the franchise will increase. Big deal. He was a San Diegan. There are businesses here that could make more money elsewhere but stay because this is a great place. In the end, he totally screwed the town where he raised his children, the place he ran away from like a rat looking for greener cheese.
The people loved the team, hated the owner, who in the end hated the city enough to leave it to its memories, very few of which he provided.
“Fifty-five years of support,” Faulconer lamented. “Fifty-five years of passion.”
The mayor wants everybody “to take a deep breath” before going after another team. The seed should be planted now, in anger. I think the Jaguars will move. We deserve better than what’s been done here. His honor should get on the phone with Jacksonville owner Shahid Khan, who’s worth more than $7 billion. Pronto.
Spanos spent a lot of money trying to get something done here. Granted. But he didn’t spend it wisely. Willy Loman was a better salesman. Dean could have used the expansion millions he must borrow — as he would have had to when he was thinking Carson — to build something here, but obviously was too fed up, too starry eyed and attracted to the L.A. vixen to do enough on his own.
Spanos is leaving for a place where he isn’t going to find a whole lot of passion and support. I wonder if his father, Alex, who unfortunately has spent his recent years in the throes of dementia, would approve of this — approve of a franchise he wanted so desperately — going somewhere to ride in the Rams’ rumble seat.
Dean has made an incredible mistake, but it’s his mistake to make. He didn’t want to go to Los Angeles? Bull. He didn’t have to.
Now he’s saying San Diegans eventually will get over it.
We shouldn’t. And we won’t.
I won’t say don’t let the door hit you in the ass. Because, Dean, you never opened it and gave it a smart chance to do so.
Published on Jan. 15, 2017 in The San Diego Union Tribune (Nick Canepa)
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