A good friend of mine told me about his divorce a few years’ ago, and he said to me stoically: ‘There was my truth, her truth and the actual truth’.
Well, as the San Diego Chargers leave San Diego for a new home two hours’ north in Inglewood, CA after a protracted fight with the City over a new stadium, that’s all I can think of: What’s the real truth?
That question will be asked from the offices to the bars to the yachts to the AA meetings in San Diego: What in the hell happened to our team? Some people will be in disbelief, wondering how in the hell this happened. Some people – for whom going to a game at Qualcomm Stadium was the highlight of their year – will be incredibly sad. And a lot of people – as shown by the fact that the team ranked second-to-last in total home attendance in 2016 (ranking just over 57,000 per game) and dead last in percentage attendance (the stadium’s total capacity is 70,000) – won’t give two craps.
‘But why should have gone to see the Chargers when the team and the stadium both sucked?’, the fans will argue, knowing full well that Chargers ownership will see a total $840 million come into their pockets by the early 2020s, thanks to ridiculously large TV deals done by the NFL in 2011…and could have at least done the team up better than they did. They’ll blame the ownership for being too patient with head coach Mike McCoy, who they really should have canned after a debacle of a 2015 season.
The fans will blame whoever was responsible for not updating the stadium (they wanted the NFL or the City to help with that, despite the fact that that owner is a billionaire).
Of course, San Diego’s owners will claim that it’s the San Diegans fault that they are leaving for LA. They will blame the fact that the City has continually refused to pay for a new stadium – which by all accounts was a dump - and therefore they are going to a place where they’ll be more ‘welcomed’ (of course, you only have to look at the sparse seating during the LA Rams’ first season in The City of Angels to know that if your team’s not successful, the fans will find other things to do).
Personally, I don’t know who’s responsible. My major memory of the Chargers was standing at the public transport station, and most of the fans going to Qualcomm were of the opposing team. Oh, and there was another one in December 2015 when it was meant to be the Chargers’ last game ever at Qualcomm. I was downtown, and the bars were packed – and celebrating. Maybe it was a going-away party, or maybe it was that they actually won a game - which was quickly becoming a Chargers' rarity. But I remember wondering: “Why are all these people not actually at the game?” I never asked anybody. Because that’s the way of the TV fan nowadays.
But going back to the divorce, I don't think we'll ever really know the truth about San Diego's leaving. We'll know about the lobbying that went on to try and get a new stadium, but we'll never know what the ownership cared more about the team or the income from the NFL TV deals (to the point in adding better players for the team to help with Philip Rivers, their golden-armed QB). We do know one thing: The fans that actually went to games are now really, really sad. And that is a tragedy.
