Take a look at all the San Diego Chargers fans in the photo above. It is remarkable! They were all holding yellow Charger Power signs. LACI recently discovered a Chargers video showing quite a bit of San Diego’s passion for the Chargers. Warning: When you watch the video below, you will truly feel the power, Charger power. It was a San Diego thing. Gone now, ripped away forever? Basically the team was stolen from San Diego. To be fair, the citizens of San Diego voted no to a huge downtown stadium project, but that was the city folks, not the entire county wide opinion. Also to be fair, the Bolts did originate out of Los Angeles, only one season, but that was 60 years ago! You would think that 56 years in the same NFL city would mean something. Send this video to the NFL and let them process it. The really well done Chargers video below (found on twitter) clearly shows the real times, the real passion, and of course the original fans. For the record, LACI is just that: Los Angeles Chargers Information, however, when such an outstanding video comes along like this, it really makes you stop and think about: “What the hell happened?” “How did the city of San Diego and its great Chargers fans get totally ripped off?”
The time ran out on San Diego. It was like the only thing that mattered was a stupid ass stadium. Green Bay still plays in a dump, but I bet they would not care if you called it that. Seems like the mayor Kevin Faulconer screwed up big time also. Too little, too late. But at the end of the day, this move is on the NFL and of course: Dean Spanos. He never much cared about the love and passion the San Diego Chargers fans had for their team. Yes their team, the Chargers! I believe his father Alex understood exactly what the Chargers meant to San Diego. All of those amazing tailgate parties, the perfect San Diego weather, all that loyal support and all those years and fans even bringing their kids up as die hard San Diego Chargers fans. When the team left San Diego four years ago, many San Diego “fans” protested by burning quality Chargers stuff like jerseys, hats etc. I never understood burning the SD stuff, but it did give much needed closure to many. So as you watch this Chargers tribute video, please remember that the Chargers were a San Diego thing and always will be. Feel the power. Charger Power!
— Los Angeles Chargers Info (@ChargersFanChat) April 14, 2020
Regarding the photo above: John Jefferson was a part of a legendary Don “Air” Coryell offensive attack which included quarterback Dan Fouts, receiver Charlie Joiner and tight end Kellen Winslow. He logged three consecutive 1,000-yard seasons with the Chargers, hauling in a total of 199 pass for 3,431 yards and 36 touchdowns while averaging 17.2 yards per catch.
He was named All-Pro and reached the Pro Bowl in each of his three seasons in San Diego, before being traded to the Green Bay Packers ahead of the 1981 season. He would spend four years with the Packers, making another Pro Bowl appearance in 1982, but his production dropped. As a Packer, Jefferson caught 149 passes for 2,253 yards and 11 touchdowns. Following the 1985 season, Jefferson joined the Cleveland Browns for a single season, starting only two games while appearing in seven. He caught three passes for 30 yards. Jefferson retired after that season at 29 years old. In 102 games, he caught 351 passes for 5,714 yards and 47 touchdowns. He was admitted into the ASU Football Hall of Fame in 1979, and was placed into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2002. Jefferson was also honored as a member of the San Diego Chargers 50th Anniversary Team in 2009. Ensuing his on-field career, Jefferson served as a receivers coach at the University of Kansas from 1990-1994, before accepting an administrative role within the athletic department. He moved to Washington, D.C. in 2000 when the NFL called him; he would serve as the director of player development for Washington from 2000 through 2009.
(Tom Krasovic UT Sports -On the NFL)
If you thought Tom Brady would make a large bet on the stewardship of Dean Spanos, if you believed the greatest quarterback of his time was soon to partner with a club many NFL players regard as cheap and cautious — and just OK at football — well, we all get fanciful notions.
Brady to the Bolts is not happening, and never was happening.
Brady, according to multiple reports, was expected to end the first free agency of his 20-year career this week by signing with the Tampa Bay Bucs. The old quarterback, 42, is headed to God’s Waiting Room.
So where does Brady’s stiff-arming leave the Chargers as they head toward their fourth NFL season since Spanos and siblings moved them north?
It leaves them with Tyrod Taylor as their top quarterback, for now, and the Spanos clan doing a slow walk toward the new Kroenke Dome, the stadium that drew them to Los Angeles.
It sends the Chargers toward the new digs looking like an 8-8 team, perhaps 9-7 or 10-6 if they catch enough breaks. And, barring an improbable trade for Cam Newton, it nudges them closer to taking a quarterback high in the draft for the first time since 2004, when they selected Eli Manning and traded him for Philip Rivers.
One plausible scenario on Draft Night: With the sixth pick or a trade thereof, the Chargers take Justin Herbert of Dan Fouts U, if they decide that, for medical reasons, he’s less risky than Tua Tagovailoa, the best lefty from Alabama since Kenny Stabler.
Three years into the Spanoses’ L.A. venture, here’s one big-picture observation: You can take the football team out of San Diego, but you can’t take the Spanoses out of the football team.
The Chargers remain still a crayon-within-the-lines outfit. It could be worse. Tom Telesco’s scouts are good. They’ve found bargains in the amateur markets, and have a feel for NFL talent. Already this month they’ve agreed to add two good blockers in guard Trai Turner and right tackle Bryan Bulaga.
But it doesn’t seem the Chargers are living up to claims that life in the country’s second-largest media market would attract football stars and fatten their margins for error. For example: The notion Brady would gravitate to L.A., as the NBA’s LeBron James had in late-career free agency, overlooked the glaring fact the Chargers are nothing like the Lakers.
Amid the new surroundings, the Spanos DNA hasn’t changed noticeably. The Bolts still don’t do big splashes. They don’t import players and coaches whose personality may make the top bosses uncomfortable. If there’s something cutting-edge about them, it’s hard to even muster a guess as to what it is.
We may not hear Brady say this, but it was wise-cracking, assertive head coach Bruce Arians who gave the Bucs a football edge in the Brady recruitment, because he’s one of the NFL’s better offensive coaches.
Not long after Spanos chose not to interview him, instead falling hard for Mike McCoy, Arians joined the Cardinals and led them to a 34-14 record between 2013-15 before falling off.
While Anthony Lynn has done some good work since Telesco and John Spanos hired him to replace McCoy, he hasn’t ended the franchise’s AFC West-title drought, now at 10 years. And partly because he inherited Rivers, it’s not fully clear what he stands for on offense, where he earned his bones as an NFL player and an assistant coach.
Lynn’s offensive coordinator, Shane Steichen, a Norv Turner protege Lynn inherited — and promoted during the 2019 season after he fired Ken Whisenhunt — is a promising coach but also a mystery.
Why would Brady go from one of the NFL’s top coordinators, Josh McDaniels, to taking a gamble on Lynn-Steichen?
Arians had this going for him: Directing quarterback Carson Palmer late in his career, he fell one victory short of a Super Bowl.
Also, Brady had to conclude the AFC West is more challenging than the NFC South for one simple reason: Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes reside in the AFC West. Reid has rewarded Chiefs owner Clark Hunt for paying him top dollar by leading the Chiefs to four straight West titles, the latest of which led to a Super Bowl victory, three years after the daring draft night trade to land Mahomes. Bear in mind, it’s divisional dominance that underlies Brady’s Hall of Fame career, if you go deeper. Finishing first in the four-team race brought him windfalls in the Super Bowl tournament, notably first-round byes and home-field advantage.
Brady’s exit from the AFC came about 20 years too late, as far as the Chargers and Rivers were concerned.
Rivers never enjoyed a victory against Brady, who went 8-0 in those matchups. (That history includes the infamous Marlon McCree fumble-game, in which Brady threw three interceptions.) Here’s a question that will bake your noodle: Do the Chargers get to a Super Bowl — and perhaps build enough support for a new stadium in San Diego — if Brady hadn’t become an all-time great in the same conference?
Rivers, 38, may have one more Super Bowl shot, with the Colts, whose division won’t include Mahomes or Brady.
The Chargers, who went from Drew Brees to Rivers the last time they were in this position, now will go to a new quarterback: Mr. TBD.
tom.krasovic@sduniontribune.com
Let me remind you why 56 years of solid San Diego Charger fans loyalty was thrown down the drain. Going on three years, it still does not make sense for the Chargers to be in Los Angeles. Seemed like The City of Angels was perfectly fine without an NFL franchise for more than two decades, after the Raiders and Rams dipped out of town for Oakland and St. Louis, respectively, in 1994. Soon, Los Angeles will have two NFL teams, sharing the same stadium. Seems weird, for example, here we are going into the third season of the Los Angeles Chargers and it still seems like a really bad dream.
Regarding the Chargers move to Los Angeles, Spanos had once said to the San Diego fans “Get over it”, move on in other words. After all, that is what he did after 56 years of loyal support, he moved on. He told San Diego bye bye. The Chargers fans were left in the dust.
Some fans say they will never drive to Los Angeles to watch them play. Some fans burned all their Chargers stuff and are still really pissed that the team moved north to LA, to a rival city no less. Some fans still watch the Chargers (to lose). And others from San Diego, still support the Chargers, but not so many as before, that is for sure. All that once proud San Diego Super Chargers feeling is not in San Diego anymore. It is easy to see why most San Diego fans feel totally burned and have no desire to want to support the Bolts anymore. All that loyalty, down the drain.
So why did Spanos leave San Diego? In a nutshell, he did not get a new stadium deal. For whatever reason, it just did not get done. So now the Chargers are trying to win over brand new fans in Los Angeles, but it sure seems like an uphill climb. Remember, LA never asked for the Chargers, so it is somewhat like the Bolts are literally an expansion team. Kinda like a runaway child heading west to LA, looking for any angle or break they can find.
Take a look at this old news clip: (This tells the story)
San Diego Chargers general counsel Mark Fabiani confirmed on the Mighty 1090 that the Chargers will file relocation paperwork in January 2016 to move to Los Angeles.
According to Fabiani, the expectation is that the St. Louis Rams and Oakland Raiders also plan to file for relocation to Los Angeles. “We’ve got to stay in the game to protect the franchise,” Fabiani said. The Chargers cannot afford to lose “the roughly 25 percent of our season ticket holders that live in Los Angeles and Orange counties.”
So way back then, Spanos said he had to stay in the game. Is he staying in the game sharing a stadium with the Rams? Seems weird. Los Angeles is a Rams town first, so the Chargers have to continue their so called “Fight for LA” for some more love. Fight for LA? What about San Diego? Any way you slice it, those loyal San Diego fans got left behind. Circling down the drain. Here is another reminder: (How it went down)
With an open invitation to Los Angeles and one foot out the door in San Diego, the NFL’s Chargers are not only demanding a stadium from their current hometown but mapping out its location.
Well, Jim Webb, Lincoln Chaffee and Rick Santorum all wanted to be president, and there’s a better chance of any of them unsuspending their campaigns and winning the whole thing than there is of the Chargers and the Spanos family of owners getting what San Diego’s been unwilling to give.
We’ll remind you that, every time San Diego taxpayers have heard the Chargers and the Spanoses put on their tough-guy routine and demand tax dollars to help replace the nearly 50-year-old Qualcomm Stadium, they’velaughed in the team’s face. That was before this time last year, when the Chargers and their ownership decided that teaming up with their hated AFC West rival, Oakland Raiders, on a $1.7 billion stadium in Carson, Calif., that they’d build with no tax money was preferable to their situation in San Diego. That idea was OK’d by the NFL’s planning committee, but the NFL instead offered the Chargers a spot in the Rams’ new building in Inglewood, California. They’d only be a tenant, but they wouldn’t have to pay much more than relocation fees.
However, the NFL also offered the Chargers $200 million to help build a new stadium in San Diego andsweetened the pot to $300 millionas an alternative to the Inglewood offer. Meanwhile, since the Los Angeles Coliseum has room only for the Rams, the Chargers are putting the best face on spending the 2016 season in San Diego. With the NFL’s blessing to move the Chargers to Los Angeles any time he’d like, Chargers Chairman Dean Spanos knows he has free rein to try and pry more cash out of San Diego and makemore statementslike this one:
“This has been our home for 55 years, and I want to keep the team here and provide the world-class stadium experience you deserve.”
Sounds like a bunch of hot air. At one point, Team Spanos wanted to team up with the Raiders. Think about that for a moment. Now Spanos is teaming up with Rams. Why all this teaming up and sharing? Just because you own the San Diego Chargers, it does not give you the right to demand a stadium or leave. But that is exactly what Spanos did. Just the idea of teaming up with the Raiders really hurt Spanos already spotty reputation. But Spanos not only demanded the new downtown Stadium, he took away San Diego’s NFL team when he did not get his way, like a big baby.
Spanos totally screwed up by giving up on the City of San Diego. He was not supposed to actually move to Los Angeles, why do you think the NFL raised their contribution to $300 million? They wanted to keep the Chargers in San Diego. Or did they? Perhaps it was all planned out this way. I doubt it. The bottom line is the San Diego fans did not matter to Spanos. This is what is important to remember. Again, the SD fans went down the drain.
It is very fair to say there were many magical Chargers moments at San Diego Stadium. Think about all the great tailgating throughout the years. Hell, I even remember when Snoop Dogg and his crew would roll down from Long Beach. The Chargers team really did have a great following in San Diego. 56 years of support was simply overlooked for new pastures. Just like when an injured played gets cut, San Diego was handed its walking papers. Its really sad. Most people you ask still say they can’t believe the Chargers are not in San Diego. Spanos really let San Diego down.
There is not much loyalty in the NFL. There was no loyalty by Deano. Yes Spanos did try to get a free stadium (built for him and the SD Chargers), but San Diego voters said no. They knew Spanos was playing them. They knew something was not quite right. You think? Seems like the San Diego fans were treated like an injured player. Once they voted no, they were cut. Kicked to the curb. Or should I say, poured down the drain!
In closing, the Chargers will play in Inglewood in 2020. The stadium may be nice, shiny and new, but it could be full of visiting teams fans on a huge scale, just like most of their home games played at Stubhub. If it is, it will be tough to see the once proud San Diego Chargers team, reduced to a visiting team at its own digs, ouch! Sorry to remind everyone, but it seems like a really bad dream. Remember San Diego Super Chargers? So do I.
So it really is 56 years of fan loyalty down the drain.
Please follow LACI on Twitter for the latest Chargers news.
Happy New Year! from LACI.
We hope you had a successful 2018 and wish you all the best for 2019.
It must be pointed out officially by LACI, that Spanos really did screw up moving the Bolts to Los Angeles. Everyone knows it by now that the Chargers truly do belong in San Diego. As we enter 2019, we can only hope that the NFL has had enough bad press and decides to pull the plug on the Carson Chargers. Imagine how the city of San Diego would be reacting right about now with the Chargers finishing 12-4. Imagine all the bars and restaurants filled with Chargers fans all over San Diego County cheering for the Chargers. All of that is gone now, sucked out like a vacuum choking out the Chargers overall relevancy of a once proud franchise. It sure feels weird that if you admit to someone in San Diego that you still like the Chargers, they will sometimes react very bitterly towards you or the team itself. We all know there are a lot of San Diego fans that are still watching the Bolts with some doing so under the radar. Others have jumped back on the Chargers bandwagon at the last minute due to the teams 12-4 success this year. Many other San Diegans have simply moved on, making it fair to question their true loyalty to the team in the first place. Or is it fair to question another fans loyalty? Which raises another red flag: For example, Ex Chargers fans would say “How dare you question my loyalty to the Chargers” or “I supported the Chargers organization as a season ticket holder for over 40 years” These fans do have a legitimate gripe. How can anyone question their loyalty? It is their right to “move on”. It is their right not to support an LA team in general. The fans feel robbed. The fans feel cheated. Some even say “Screw LA” or “How can you even think of rooting for an LA franchise?” The whole thing is so retarded. Trying to sort it all out can be a pain in the ass. Like how do root for the San Diego Padres, then support one LA team (Chargers) but hate the other (Dodgers). Or what about this one: “Screw Spanos, I will never, ever go to LA to watch the Chargers.” That has become a reality for Spanos as very few fans have made the trip to LA on game day. As a matter of fact, most of the crowds at Stub Hub were so pathetic, it really embarrassed the league and Spanos. Even LT (Tomlinson) made a plea (begged) to San Diego to please come to LA and support the Chargers- via XX Sports leader Billy Ray Smith’s podcast. It has become a joke of sorts.
What does all this mean? It is so sad that the Chargers moved to LA in the first place for basically greed, after all, Los Angeles never asked for the Chargers. The larger market share and a shiny new stadium was way more important to Spanos then the very proud and powerful San Diego Chargers fan base. That is the bottom line. Whether or not you still support the Chargers will not change the 2019 reality of San Diego’s once proud San Diego Super Chargers. The San Diego Super Chargers are a thing of the past. It almost rings hollow these days as it should. Never forget the loud and proud days at Jack Murphy Stadium, so loud and the seats shaking like crazy! Gone but not forgotten. Stay true to your beliefs. Stay true to San Diego. Because rooting for Los Angeles just doesn’t feel right, but rooting for the Chargers to win a Superbowl does feel right! Maybe not? Go figure and Go Chargers!
I need a drink after all that! Cheers and Happy New Year 2019!
In November 1965, a $27 million bond was passed allowing construction to begin on a brand new stadium for the city of San Diego. Construction on the stadium began one month later. When completed, the facility was named San Diego Stadium. 50 years later, the city loses the Chargers. Why?
Perhaps the Chargers over reacted. Sure there were leaks in the stadium and the concrete cracking, but why was there not more maintenance and improvements done. Seems like the city of San Diego should have stepped up their game and offered major tax dollars to restore San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. Sorry Qualcomm, your 20 million dollars naming rights are pretty much over and spent at this point. Seems like letting Qualcomm fall apart came back to bite San Diego in the ass. Dolphins owner Stephen Rossand Chargers chairman Dean Spanos faced similar crises in recent years — neither could muster up enough support to obtain public funds to upgrade their stadiums.
The Dolphins’ $350 million taxpayer initiative died on the floor of the Florida Legislature in 2013, and the Chargers’ half-billion-dollar hotel tax initiative failed spectacularly this past November, receiving only 43.6 percent approval, far short of the 66 percent threshold required to pass.
Ross, the Dolphins’ owner since 2009, responded admirably to his failure. He dropped his veiled threat of relocation, stopped asking for public money, and simply paid for the upgrades himself. The result was a beautifully renovated Hard Rock Stadium that now has a canopy to protect fans from sun and rain.
Spanos, whose family has controlled the Chargers since 1984, responded cowardly. He threw up his hands, stopped looking for a solution, and sold out.
Spanos punched the collective gut of San Diego on Thursday when he announced that he is moving the Chargers to Los Angeles, abandoning the community where they took root for 56 years.
This decision had nothing to do with fan support, and everything to do with public support for a stadium, of which there is little-to-no appetite in California. Spanos took the easy way out. Spanos decided that 56 years of support simply did not matter.
“We pretty much exhausted whatever possibilities that were down there, and it was time to come,” Spanos told San Diego TV station KUSI. “We’re excited to be here and looking forward to spending the next 25 to 30 years here.”
Why Why Why? Why is this stadium so bad? It looks so beautiful from above.
Spanos could have been a hero for San Diego, much like South Florida now appreciates Ross. Miami fans have a nicer stadium, and economic boosters such as Super Bowls and college football championship games will now return.
Instead, Spanos chose to be the villain, and it’s a label that will follow him to the grave, much like it did for former Browns and Ravens owner Art Modell.
Spanos had unsuccessfully spent the last 15 years asking for public money to replace the outdated Qualcomm Stadium, and decided he was out of ideas and out of patience, running off to LA to chase dollar signs. The NFL had granted Spanos an extension until Tuesday to decide on whether to move, but Spanos didn’t need the extra time.
“We live in a great city and we will move forward,” Mayor Kevin Faulconer of San Diego said. “San Diego didn’t lose the Chargers, the Chargers lost San Diego.” That statement seems to be true. While some San Diegan’s might actually drive to LA, the majority never will. Why would Spanos want to alienate that many fans? Perhaps the LA market is all that matters to Spanos at this point. Good luck with that. Why start over? Too bad San Diego did not have an owner that really cared about the long term vision for a beautiful city like San Diego. He could have been the absolute hero in more ways than one. Now, only memories of the Chargers remain.
The Chargers would still likely be in San Diego if their owner had deeper pockets. Spanos, unlike Ross, doesn’t have the individual wealth to simply pay for renovations himself. Forbes lists his family’s wealth at around $2.4 billion, though most of it is theoretical wealth tied to the value of the Chargers. The San Diego Reader estimated last year that Spanos is worth about $200 million outside of the Chargers.
Now Spanos will be forking over as much as $650 million to the NFL in a relocation fee, though the NFL changed its rules to help him pay it. League rules prevent teams from carrying more than $250 million in debt, but in December the owners voted to allow Spanos to borrow up to half of the relocation fee ($325 million).
It’s nice to see the NFL get creative to help one of its own. Too bad the owners couldn’t use that same creativity to help Spanos come up with the funds to renovate Qualcomm, or help build a new stadium. Surely, the $13 billion NFL and its mostly billionaire owners could have found a way.
The Chargers were dead last in the league in total home attendance (456,197) this season.
For many Chargers fans, the move won’t change much. They’ll still get to watch Chargers games on TV (though the team may undergo a complete rebranding — with a new team name and uniforms — within a few years in Los Angeles). Some fans may still drive a couple of hours north to attend the games.
But the Chargers aren’t just playing in a new city. They are detaching from the community they had called home since 1961. Chargers players won’t be visiting San Diego elementary schools on Tuesdays anymore, or holding youth clinics in San Diego’s parks. The team’s charity arm won’t invest as much into the community.
The Chargers meant something to the people of San Diego, even if attendance waned in recent years (Spanos’s threat of relocation obviously played a major role in that).
According to a poll from the San Diego Union-Tribune, 70 percent of San Diegans blame Spanos for the team’s move. Only 6 percent blame Faulconer and 9 percent blame the NFL at large.
“At the end of the day, Dean Spanos was never willing to work with us on a stadium solution and demanded a lot more money than we could have ever agreed to,” Faulconer said. “We could not support a deal that is not in the best interests of San Diego.”
The Rams’ move to Los Angeles last year made sense on several levels, and didn’t engender too many feelings of pity or remorse for the people of St. Louis. The Rams were originally LA’s team, and St. Louis always felt like a temporary landlord.
The Raiders’ potential move to Las Vegas doesn’t boil the blood, either. The Raiders are more of a regional fan base after already moving twice (from Oakland to Los Angeles to Oakland), and Vegas is ready to roll with $750 million in public funding for a stadium already approved.
But this Chargers move stinks all around — NFL greed at its worst. Notably, no one in Los Angeles seems to even want the Chargers. San Diego and LA are two distinct markets, and the Chargers have been decidedly “San Diego” for 56 years.
“We. Don’t. Want. You,” Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke wrote last week. “The Chargers might not even be in the top-five favorite NFL teams in Los Angeles. The Chargers are San Diego’s team. The Chargers are beloved there. The Chargers belong there.”
Excitement for the Rams wore off quickly as they went 4-12 and had the worst offense in the NFL. Now the NFL is flooding the LA market with a second team, and expects it to be successful? A team with no roots in the community and no sizzle on the field?
As comedian Jimmy Kimmel said of Thursday’s Chargers news, “Fans here in LA reacted the same way we react to opening a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon in the mail.”
But Spanos got his way. The Chargers will now play in a sparkling new stadium in Los Angeles — without having to pay the freight, of course. In 2019, they will be tenants of Stan Kroenke’s $2.6 billion football palace, with the ability to sell luxury suites and personal seat licenses and corporate sponsorships.
It will increase the value of Spanos’s franchise by hundreds of millions of dollars and end the stadium headache that has perplexed him for 15 years.
It was the easy way out. Ross didn’t take it with the Dolphins. Spanos jumped at the chance.
