Will the Chargers move out of San Diego? This is the View From America
Tuesday 29 September 2015 10:45, UK
Aside from whether Tom Brady should have been suspended for ‘Deflategate’, NFL owners, players and fans the world over have had another question on their lips.
"Will there be a NFL team in Los Angeles in 2016?"
Our US sportswriter Alex Ferguson was in San Diego - home of one of the clubs in danger of the move - the Chargers.
San Diego residents love to run, surf and relax, seemingly in that order. It's reputed that unless the sky is completely blue, San Diego residents consider it "too cloudy". Having visited a number of times over there and experienced rain only once, I see where they are coming from. I'm getting a little snobby myself.
Professionally, the local baseball team, the Padres, have gone from pre-season contenders to nothingness in six months, and it's all been quietly swept under the golden sands.
There doesn't seem to be an attitude of rage when it comes to keeping the hometown Chargers, either. When you try and talk to random people about the possible move of the team that the city has had since 1961, the unilateral answer is a shrug of the shoulders.
San Diego resident Johnny Gomez told me: "There wasn't mass tears when the Rams left LA in the mid-80s, and while I'll be sad, there won't be mass tears if the Chargers leave to go to LA, either."
Just imagine if this sort of threatened move was to happen to a team in Green Bay. We think the reaction would be a little more, ahem, icy.
But don't expect a LA or Carson City-based Chargers team to be supported by their Southern Californian cousins.
Another chap, John Cunningham, who I also met in a downtown bar, has had the Chargers in his family since their arrival and was a little more vehement in his response to a 'what will you do if they move to LA?' question.
"Why would I go up there?," he said. "It's not my team."
Some fans jokingly blame the Spanos family - who own the Chargers - for simply not being rich enough.
"Alex Spanos isn't like Robert Kraft, Jerry Jones or Arthur Blank, who made their billions outside of the league. The Chargers are his main form of income," joked a fan, adding that maybe that was why LA was seemingly the family's option.
And while we don't know the ins and outs of the Spanos' wealth, we do know that the city of San Diego pitched their stadium proposal to an NFL committee in August, and Spanos was at least present at the meeting. What we also know is that there won't be another plea from 'SD' or St Louis or Oakland - the other two cities involved in a potential move at the NFL's meetings in October.
NFL VP Eric Grubman told the Los Angeles Times: "If the cities were to present, they would just get polite attention. At a league meeting, in that room, nobody hears anything, particularly when there are outsiders and when we have a full agenda.
"They would be short presentations, and you'd be bringing in the state or city leadership in to do a big dog, horse and pony show and then nobody asks a question, or if they do, it's just a polite one."
But back to the fans.
According to Chris Jenkins of the San Diego Union-Tribune, season ticket sales were up 6,000 on last year, noting that the bump was due to a mix of wanting to be there to say goodbye, and showing loyalty.
The crowd was just over 66,093 - still 5,000 under the capacity of 71,294. And you couldn't help but notice from the TV coverage that a lot of the fans in Qualcomm were wearing Detroit jerseys, too.
"Evidently, some of those tickets wound in the hands of Lions fans who showed up by the thousands," confirmed Jenkins.
"They went quiet soon after the Chargers started chipping away at a 21-3 Lions lead." The 'Bolts' ended up winning 33-28.
If this kind of lightning comeback carries on and (home) fans continue to roll in, maybe the San Diego Chargers might not go anywhere fast, after all.
Watch the New England Patriots @ Buffalo Bills on Sunday at 17:30 on Sky Sports 2 HD, followed by Dallas Cowboys @ Philadelphia Eagles at 21:15.
