When I was invited by the Union-Tribune to write an op-ed piece in advance of the city of San Diego’s Aug. 10 meeting with a committee of NFL team owners – tasked with answering questions such as, “What can San Diego expect from this meeting? How will the city make its case? What is the best outcome the city can hope for?” – I accepted, giving myself one condition. I had to be brutally honest, no matter how painful and unpopular my thoughts might be.

Here is the cold, hard truth, San Diego: You are not the Chargers’ first choice. The Chargers want Los Angeles in the worst way. What can San Diego officials say or do on Monday to keep the team here? NOTHING.

It is impossible for any right-minded person to deduce anything but this.

After 20 years of the NFL using Los Angeles as its stalking horse so that cities needing new stadiums could threaten to pick up and move to the West Coast, the league seems hellbent on putting a franchise there. This past January, it was announced that St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke had joined forces with Stockbridge Capital Group, owners of the nearly 300-acre Hollywood Park site in Inglewood, and that they planned to build a $1.86-billion privately financed 80,000-seat football stadium. Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. has consistently said Inglewood is building a stadium “no matter what.” The Inglewood site will be shovel-ready in December.


Chargers Chairman of the Board Dean Spanos believes that Los Angeles is his and his alone. Mayor Kevin Faulconer and his stadium negotiating team can stand on their heads in front of the six NFL owners on the League’s Los Angeles Opportunities Committee, and it will not matter. San Diegans, you are No. 2 in the Chargers’ eyes.

For the past decade or so, the Chargers have talked about nine stadium “concepts,” but none of them were full-blown proposals with legitimate financing plans and completed environmental impact studies. The Chargers never saw any of the nine through to fruition. All were dropped, tossed to the side or outright abandoned by the team, but always blamed on other people and other things, such as inept government leaders, obstructionists in the communities, San Diego’s pension crisis, the economic downturn or built-in issues at the sites that the Chargers have forever maintained could not be overcome. Ironically, after each site failed, they seemingly always returned to Mission Valley as the preferred site.

Then, last fall, the Chargers inexplicably went radio-silent. When the mayor tried to engage the team in stadium discussions, Mark Fabiani, special counsel to Spanos, told Faulconer to sit tight, that there was no sense of urgency. It is clear now why the Chargers were so quiet: They were planning to sneak out of town and move to Carson. They had hoped to demonstrate to the NFL that there was no interest in retaining them in San Diego.

But the mayor threw a monkey wrench into their plans. He announced in his State of the City address Jan. 14 that he was forming a task force of civic leaders to help develop the first “real plan” to build a new stadium and keep the team in San Diego. From that moment on, Fabiani, who presumably conveys the thoughts, values and ethics of team ownership, has adopted a scorched earth strategy to get the team out of town.


He has tried to manipulate the media and bloggers, unleashing texts and emails written in legalese with incredible ferocity and in great abundance, seemingly around the clock. He has leaked documents prior to important meetings with the Citizens’ Stadium Advisory Group (CSAG) and Eric Grubman, the NFL’s executive vice-president and Los Angeles-point person. And he has ridiculed, attacked and abused some of San Diego’s icons and civic-minded citizens, including Convention Center Chair Steve Cushman, City Attorney Jan Goldsmith, the mayor, CSAG and the Padres, insinuating through a media channel the baseball team was a roadblock in the Chargers getting a downtown stadium. The thought may be it would impact Petco Park for parking and compete for revenue-generating events.

Why has the Spanos family continued to maintain that San Diego is their first choice, but Fabiani has proceeded to go all napalm on the city? Why have the Chargers continued to do everything in their power to make their $1.7 billion Carson stadium to be shared with the Oakland Raiders a reality, but walked away from the mayor’s negotiating table and refused to help obtain entitlements for the proposed Mission Valley stadium site? Why did the Chargers contribute $466,000 of the $900,000 spent on the ballot initiative to fast-track the Carson stadium, but have not spent a similar amount to do so on any of their “concepts” in San Diego?

Because Los Angeles is about something more than a stadium: Truly, it is all about ego and greed. The NFL has stated it will make teams adhere to relocation guidelines and will not allow teams to move just to increase an owner’s net worth. The question is will that truly be the measuring stick.

At one point, a few years ago, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and the Chargers nearly came to an agreement that would move the team to downtown Los Angeles and provide it with a state-of-the-art stadium (Farmers Field) in exchange for a portion of the team ownership. The Spanos family reportedly balked at the ownership stake AEG demanded, putting a swift end to negotiations. How could the Spanos family have known then that their inability to make a deal would ultimately cede Los Angeles? Enter Kroenke, the NFL’s second richest owner ($6.3 billion), a businessman who is not afraid to take risks and a force of nature.


Fabiani likes to say that the world changed for the Chargers when Kroenke announced he was building a stadium in Inglewood. But it also can be effectively argued that the world really changed for the Chargers when Steve Ballmer bought the NBA’s Clippers for $2 billion. This is when the Carson pursuit was undertaken in earnest. Forbes recently valued the Chargers at $995 million, ranking them 26th out of 32 NFL teams. In Los Angeles, the team could be worth three times that, but with significant debt. The Spanos family wants part of that newfound riches.

The Chargers still have to evaluate the cost of capital, the relocation fees, the cost to move – including new facilities – the availability of, and lost revenue accruing from, a temporary stadium for up to five years, and the need to market unlike what they do presently. They also have to come to grips with the “real” location of the 25 percent of the business done north of San Diego County.

At the end of the day, it does not matter how much Faulconer cares. It does not matter what Fabiani spins. What matters is the strength of the egos and depth of the greed of Kroenke and Spanos. Ultimately, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell may have to lock the two billionaires in a room, and say, “Do not come out until you have figured this out!”

But here is the other cold, hard truth, San Diego: If you continue to stay focused on the end goal of building a new stadium, the NFL may one day give you another look. Examine the cases of Baltimore, St. Louis, Houston, Cleveland, Oakland and even Los Angeles. The NFL will know a good deal, and the league does not want to be locked out of the country’s eighth largest city and fourth-fastest-growing community. Adopt the famous Vince Lombardi adage, “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” To date, the NFL has put teams back into cities from which teams have moved. You always have that to fight for – and the option of Los Angeles failing in its NFL attempt, as it has consistently done since the 1970s.