NBC 7’s Derek Togerson discusses the real meaning of Sunday’s pro-Raiders crowd at Qualcomm Stadium in this commentary
What we saw on Sunday at Qualcomm Stadium was impressive.
68,352 fans gave the Chargers their first sellout of the year. The interesting part is the vast majority of them were not cheering for the team playing in its home town.
So NFL owners who are going to re-evaluate whether or not to allow the Chargers to exercise their option and move to Los Angeles for next season need to ask the following question:
If that’s how bad it’s gotten in San Diego how on earth is that team … with that ownership … going to develop a following in Los Angeles?
The stadium was at least 75% filled with Raiders fans and they were treating this game like it was South Oakland. In fact, Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers said he has seen an atmosphere just like the one from Sunday in Mission Valley.
“In Oakland,” said Rivers. “It was the same. It was a road game.”
In their first six home games of the year the Chargers only topped 60,000 fans once (in Week 4 when the still infinitely popular Drew Brees and the Saints came to town). San Diego has played to 80% of Qualcomm Stadium’s capacity in 2016, far and away the lowest attendance in the National Football League.
Now a lot of folks are going to look at this and say it’s proof that San Diego does not want the Chargers around and the team should just move to Los Angeles. However, that is a shortsighted and erroneous conclusion. There are other factors to consider and perhaps this development will actually work to keep the Bolts in San Diego.
The large drop in attendance is due to several factors, not the least of which is this team has had back-to-back losing records and retains a head coach that is hated by about 90% of the fan base.
The biggest issue is the fan base is simply fed up with ownership and don’t want to give the Spanos family any more of their money. Ditto the reason Measure C failed. The Chargers talked until they were powder blue in the face about how the tax money was not coming from San Diegans, it was coming from tourists.
What they never realized is people in San Diego didn’t care where the money was coming from as much as they cared about where the money was going to.
By this point you are probably thinking, “OK Derek you said you were going to make the case that Sunday might keep the Chargers here and all you’ve outlined are reasons to leave. What gives?”
Good question and I’m glad you asked.
Remember back in 2006 and 2007? When the Chargers were good and invested in winning and Qualcomm Stadium was packed to the top with Bolts fans? When the only Carson in Southern California anyone knew was a Heisman Trophy winner from USC?
In those days the Chargers fans still had faith in the ownership group. But over the last few years that faith has eroded. The fan base and the city still love the team; they just can’t stand the man who runs it. What Dean Spanos has been able to do is alienate an entire fan base in less than a decade.
NFL owners know this.
The Rams are not capturing the hearts and minds of Los Angeles sports fans the way the league thought they would. Having an offense that looks like it’s calling plays out of a 1996 junior varsity playbook certainly does not help. But the other 32 NFL owners are seeing that the L.A. sports fan is not simply going to throw money at a game because it plays in the Southland.
Over the weekend talk surfaced that the Chargers would consider rebranding if they move north, leaving the Chargers name in San Diego. It’s what the Browns did when they took off for Baltimore and became the Ravens.
Everyone knows at this point the Chargers name does not resonate in Los Angeles. The only real hope for them to become a team L.A. can get behind is to have a new name, uniform, color scheme, the whole shebang.
Of course that will completely kill any alliance with the few fans in San Diego who would follow the team up to L.A. and we’re right back to where we started. It is going to take a marketing expert, someone who truly knows how to cultivate a fan base and sell a product, to get a foothold in L.A.
Most of the NFL owners have had their teams for years. They were around in 2006 when The Q was rocking. They have seen the passion of this fan base and have got to be wondering right now … How the hell did this happen?
The vast majority of NFL owners like Dean Spanos. They see him as a dutiful soldier who will go with what the league tells him to do. But I cannot imagine many of those men really respect Dean Spanos and that is why Sunday’s showing in Mission Valley, where Raiders fans overran the Chargers home stadium, could very well give them pause when the thought of letting the Bolts move to L.A. comes up.
Los Angeles is still the league’s pet market and now that they see it’s going to be more difficult than they thought to make it a football hotbed the real decision makers, guys like Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft and Paul Allen, are going to take a hard look at what happened in San Diego.
They will see a man who had a loyal fan base turn against him due to his actions (and I want to say right now the parade of individuals through City Hall is certainly not devoid of fault here, as well, but that’s a story for another day). They will see a man who has not been able to figure out how to make it work in a market that supported a team for five decades despite no Super Bowl titles before finally calling Uncle.
They will look at how the Raiders fans traveled and say, sure Mark Davis you can go wherever you want to go. They know the Raiders have a national fan base and will be fine in Las Vegas or Los Angeles or San Diego or Midland.
But one would have to think that display of silver and black at Qualcomm would be enough to make the rest of the NFL think about changing its mind on allowing the Chargers to relocate. The other 31 owners have the power to tell Dean to stay and try again to make it work, this time putting in some actual effort on a San Diego stadium deal.
Or maybe there is a third option here. The league would love to get the $500 million-plus relocation fee (likely closer to $650 million) from the Chargers and they know the most logical reason for the team to move is to drive the price up and then sell. A sale will drive up the value of all the other franchises.
And if there is one thing we all know about the NFL it’s this: the NFL is about the NFL making money for the NFL.
Granted, predicting the behavior of a bunch of billionaires is not an accurate science and by now they could all be so fed up about this whole situation they let the Chargers move just to be over the drama. But most of these men are businessmen first and team owners second. Perhaps their cooler business minds will prevail.
