Chargers' possible move would deepen San Diego's sad sports history

Brent Schrotenboer | USA TODAY Sports

SAN DIEGO — No bigger city in America has suffered a sadder sports history than this one.

This is a fact. Of the nine most populous cities in the U.S, only San Diego never has won a championship in the NFL, NBA, NHL or Major League Baseball.

Four different San Diego teams have tried. But only two are left. And now another team might leave, too:

The NFL's Chargers are considering a move to Los Angeles County as soon as next year, adding more misfortune to this sunny city's long list of lost seasons, lost teams and lost players.

"It would be devastating," legendary former Chargers quarterback Dan Fouts told USA TODAY Sports. "I just can't even imagine San Diego without the Chargers being there."

After so much sorrow, the larger question is why. Why would teams leave this paradise? And why can't they get the job done here in the end?

Consider the cosmic cruelty involved with its poor past:

-- No other city has seen two different NBA teams permanently ditch town for greener pastures. The Rockets left San Diego for Houston in 1971. The Clippers left for Los Angeles in 1984.

-- Only one of the city's major-college teams has ever won a national title: the San Diego State men's volleyball team in 1973. But the university eliminated the program in a cost-cutting move in 2000.

-- Several Hall of Fame-caliber stars have suited up for San Diego pro teams, including quarterback Drew Brees, baseball manager Bruce Bochy, basketball center Bill Walton and outfielder Dave Winfield. But each of those four endured more losses than wins during their time here. After moving to other teams, they also each won at least one Super Bowl, World Series or NBA Finals. In Bochy's case, he's won three world championships in the past five seasons with the San Francisco Giants, all while still owning a home in San Diego County.

-- In 1984, a local high school graduate at least made the city proud when he was named MVP of the World Series. But that player was Alan Trammell, a shortstop who was playing for the Detroit Tigers — against his hometown Padres. Trammell and Tigers crushed the Padres in San Diego's first World Series appearance, winning in five games.

EVOLUTIONARY THEORY

So what's the deal here?

"You can come up with a million answers," said Tom Ables, 89, a longtime fan of the Padres, Chargers and San Diego State Aztecs.

Besides bad players, bad decisions and bad facilities, there are other theories.

Just don't call it a curse. It's more like a tradeoff. In exchange for being able to live and work in a warm and sunny coastal climate, San Diego residents are burdened with distractions that tend to prevent productivity. The beach, the mountains and the desert — all can be visited on the same 70-degree afternoon in San Diego County.

Perhaps that's partly why only two Fortune 500 companies have headquarters here, compared to five in Omaha, and 26 in Houston.

A lack of focus also could play a part in the sports culture. In 101 combined seasons in the NBA, MLB and NFL, San Diego teams have won more games than they lost only 32 times.

Sharing the sunshine in Southern California, Los Angeles has had more major league teams than San Diego and has fared better at winning championships. Yet some of those teams have endured lengthy championship droughts despite having big payrolls and big stars. For example, the Angels have won one World Series since 1961, and the Dodgers haven't won a World Series since 1988. By contrast, New York and Boston have combined to win eight World Series since 1996.

"Great weather may dampen motivation," said Adam Alter, an associate professor at New York University and author of Drunk Tank Pink, a book about how the environment and other factors influence behavior.

This relates to the theory of evolution.

"Humans and other animals tend to glide through life unless they encounter a reason to engage more deeply with the world," Alter said. "Harsher weather tends to temporarily dampen your mood, which acts as a signal that everything isn't OK in the world. That makes you more vigilant and potentially hard-working, whereas sunshine can dampen your motivation by signaling that all is right in the world."

The fair weather certainly has more fans than the sports teams here, where the Navy is the city's biggest employer.

The San Diego Zoo even draws bigger annual crowds (around 3.2 million) than the Padres and Chargers, which last year combined for about 2.7 million.

So people care less about spectator sports. And that generally could mean there's not enough public pressure on the teams to win. By the same token, it also could mean there's not enough public determination to keep teams here when team owners start looking for better business deals.

"This is a place where there is so much you can do all year long," Ables said. "In other places at certain times of year, what are you going to do but go to the football game? That's not the whole answer, but it is a factor I think."

The Padres nearly relocated to Washington, D.C., in 1974 after five miserable seasons in San Diego. In that case, a new owner — Ray Kroc — came to the rescue to keep the team from leaving. Decades later, San Diego voters approved a new stadium for the Padres: Petco Park, which opened in 2004 with the help of significant public financing.

Other teams have left town or quit after suffering from a lack of wins, lack of customers or lackluster facilities.

PARADISE DESERTED

Rock singer Eddie Money released a hit song in the 1970s called "Two Tickets to Paradise." In pursuit of better fortunes elsewhere, the NBA's Rockets and Clippers pulled an Eddie Money reverse. They took two tickets from paradise, and the NBA never came back.

"I don't think the area really has ever gotten over the loss of the NBA teams," said Bruce Binkowski, who has worked as a public-relations staffer or public-address announcer for the San Diego Chargers, Padres, Clippers, Rockets and the American Basketball Association's Conquistadors.

"There's always that 'What if?'."

The Rockets were founded as an NBA expansion team in San Diego in 1967, when they selected future Hall of Fame coach Pat Riley as their first draft pick. The team later drafted Rudy Tomjanovich and future Hall-of-Famers Calvin Murphy and Elvin Hayes. But it never posted a winning season before owner Bob Breitbard sold the team to new owners in Texas in 1971, largely because of a rising tax bill.

The Conquistadors stepped in after that but didn't last long either, even after Wilt Chamberlain left the Los Angeles Lakers to become the team's coach. The franchise folded amid financial troubles in 1975.

"That last year, I was getting my final paychecks in cash," Binkowksi said.

The Clippers arrived in 1978, led by World B. Free, a guard who helped the team finish with 43-39 record in its first season in San Diego. It turned out to be the Clippers' only winning season in San Diego. Donald Sterling bought the team in 1981 and started complaining about the lack of revenue within a year.

"We didn't average 5,000 people (in San Diego) this year," Sterling said in 1982, two years before he moved the team to L.A. "I don't think 2,000 people paid to see any of our games. Most of them got in free."

Those teams played in San Diego's Sports Arena, which is still standing after 48 years. Now known as the Valley View Casino Center, it currently serves as the home of Sockers and Gulls, an indoor soccer team and minor league hockey team, respectively.

PRO SPORTS GRAVEYARD

A seemingly countless number of lesser pro teams have set up shop in San Diego, only to go out of business because of financial problems. They initially think they can successfully tap into one the nation's biggest cities — at least until they realize that not enough people want to sit around watching minor league sports when the weather is usually nice enough to do almost anything else.

The city's graveyard of lesser-known pro teams includes the Wildcats, Riptide, Mariners, Barracudas, Hawks, Wildfire, Stingrays, Friars, Seduction and Surf Dawgs.

The Gulls folded in 2006 but are coming back this year as an affiliate of the NHL's Anaheim Ducks.

Minor league team owners have come here "with higher expectations than they should have with attendance," Binkowski said.

"I think that's part of it, plus the facilities," Binkowski said. "We don't have the facilities that are conducive to a minor league franchise."

San Diego doesn't have a facility that's conducive to NFL football, either, according to the Chargers and NFL.

So now they might leave, too.

They moved here from Los Angeles in 1961 and won the AFL championship in 1963, before that league merged with the NFL in 1970.

They've been to only one Super Bowl — in 1995, when they were embarrassed by the San Francisco 49ers, 49-26. But they dominate the spectator sports scene here and have been competitive recently, having made the playoffs in six of the past 11 seasons.

The problem is their home, Qualcomm Stadium, which opened in 1967 and is practically falling apart.

For more than a decade, the team has been trying to get a new stadium in San Diego. Such efforts didn't even gain much meaningful attention from the city until recently, when city leaders finally seemed to come in from the sunshine long enough to roll up their sleeves and get serious about the issue.

But it might be too little, too late. In January, the city's mayor, Kevin Faulconer, assembled a task force to work on possible stadium solutions for the team as the crisis came to a head.

"We're talking about the possibility of losing our team," Faulconer said in January. "At no point in San Diego's history has the possibility of the Chargers moving to Los Angeles been more real."

The team revealed in February that it is pursuing a new stadium in Carson, Calif., about 110 miles up the coast. On April 21, the Carson City Council approved the stadium plan.

"There is a huge bunch of rabid Chargers fans who would be heartbroken," Ables said. "There would be a combination of anger and sadness and everything else. I would say it would be, without question, the biggest departure of any athletic program in San Diego history."

It would leave the Padres as the last big-league team in town. Fortunately for the city, their agreement with the city keeps them here until 2032. Until then, the city probably doesn't have to worry about its baseball team vacating this vacation land, too.

"The Padres shall not relocate the team ... to a location other than the city of San Diego, California," the agreement states.

Follow sports writer Brent Schrotenboer on Twitter @Schrotenboer. E-mail: bschrotenb@usatoday.com