The San Diego Chargers have announced they will be moving to Los Angeles for the 2017 season via a letter from the owner posted to their official Twitter account. The announcement was made despite ownership not filing any official relocation papers with the league.

Last year the Chargers were given until January 17, 2017 to announce a move up the coast.

NFL Network Insider Ian Rapoport wrote today that the Chargers would also be debuting a new team logo in an article on NFL.com:

“The Chargers are expected to formally announce their decision to move Thursday and they’ll also debut a new team logo, according to sources.” (emphasis ours)

The team eventually updated their Twitter avatar to show a new logo featuring an interlocked “LA” in white with a lightning bolt from the end of the “L”. A graphic of this is at the top of this post. We imagine this will officially be classified as an alternate logo.

As for the name of the team we can see that “Chargers Football Company, LLC”, the parent company of the San Diego Chargers, have already secured the trademark for both “Los Angeles Chargers” and “LA Chargers”. These were both filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on January 14, 2016. So that isn’t going anywhere.

Also their official Twitter account has already adopted the name “LOS ANGELES CHARGERS”, so yeah, I think that seems pretty solid.

This will mark the second franchise to “come home” to Los Angeles in less than a year as the San Diego Chargers played their first season in Los Angeles when they were still in the American Football League in 1960. The St Louis Rams relocated back to Los Angeles on January 13, 2016 (one year ago tomorrow) after 20+ years in Missouri, the team had moved from LA to St Louis in 1994.

The move ends over 50 years of Chargers football in the beautiful city of San Diego, California. The team won an AFL championship in 1963 as well as an AFC title in 1994 which led to their first and only appearance in the Super Bowl, a 49-26 loss to the San Francisco 49ers at Super Bowl XXIX. The Chargers also won 18 division championships, 13 of which while in the National Football League. Eleven pro football hall of famers spent some time wearing the uniform of the San Diego Chargers including Dan Fouts, Junior Seau, and even Johnny Unitas for a brief stint in 1973.

Here’s the letter in full announcing the move, perhaps that wordmark (suddenly without the gold accents) is another new logo?

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