It’s very normal in sports for a greedy owner to take a beloved team away from their city and give their fans a pair of middle fingers. Some cases are worse than others, though. One of, if not the worst cases is with the former San Diego Chargers moving to Los Angeles because owner Dean Spanos could not get public funding for a new stadium and refused to use his own wealth to pay for one. There are plenty of problems with this move and it is biting Spanos in the ass hard.

The first problem is plain and simple: The San Diego faithful did not take kindly to the relocation. The Chargers fan base had dropped significantly since they felt cheated on: the love of their life sleeping with their hotter and more experienced sister. San Diego would now become Los Angeles, one of the hottest cities in the world as opposed to a small, quiet town. The fans did what any reasonable person would do when they realized they were being cheated on: they left. Jerseys and memorabilia were burned to ashes, expletives flying through the air, a town shocked that this team had straight up left over a simple stadium.

But what about LA? They’d be glad to have them, especially since they left San Diego for the sole reason of staying there long-term. Well the St Louis Rams arrived there first and they didn’t exactly get a very warm welcoming. Like with the Chargers, many Rams fans left the team when they relocated, but they did have plenty of fans in LA. As for the Chargers, they can’t bring fans to their 30,000 seat soccer stadium, which is the smallest stadium in the league by over another 30K. Most of the fans that do show up to the games root for the away team. It’s bad when Pennsylvania’s teams each take over a west coast stadium. It’s even worse when the stadium plays the away team’s hype song. It gets even more worse when the main attraction of the game is a 4th string QB on the away team who got famous by calling ducks and is making his first career start. The Rams normally don’t have those problems and have decent fan attendance. The Chargers seem to be the least popular team in their own city. Even when they went 12-4 and were competing for a possible 1 seed, no one cared

They have a tendency to piss off their own players. Joey Bosa held out of training camp and the first 4 weeks of the season because they wouldn’t give him enough medical benefits on his rookie deal, and this team tends to have the biggest issue with injuries in the league. Phillip Rivers wouldn’t even move to LA when the team did and stayed in San Diego, where most believed the team belonged, and then he and his version of the Duggars left for Florida the very first moment they got. The team even refused to let people like Rivers and Antonio Gates attend the Hall of Fame ceremony for Chargers legend Ladanian Tomlinson. Eli Manning refused to even play for them and said so before the Chargers were dumb enough to select him, which lost them a 1st round pick when they sent him to New York for Rivers. Not only do fans hate the team, but the players do too.

So seeing these problems, they should go back to San Diego and start over, right? That probably won’t work out since they’re hated there and it would show desperation. Well what if they stay in LA and make fans there over the years? That won’t be tried for long because they share a brand new stadium with the Rams and they’ll owe rent to Stan Kroenke to be able to play there, starting this year. What about selling the team? Spanos is a stubborn prick and has shown no interest in selling the team. Even if they did, its hard to tell if a change in ownership would truly change the hearts of NFL fans and ex-Chargers fans. What about moving elsewhere and making a new fanbase? That problem is like going back to San Diego, other places will see their desperation and not fall for it. The best way for them to get fans is to go out of the country. If they go overseas, the league logistics would be a nightmare and the whole league would suffer from it. The only reasonable places they’d be possibly welcomed is Toronto or Mexico City, and that’s still a maybe.

So what should the Chargers do that works for everyone? Well, the best option is to delete the franchise. Fold. Die. Fans of all sports, including me, will use that term more jokingly and in rage (like when Houston blew a 24-0 lead to KC and traded away Nuk Hopkins for nothing), but I’m serious here. Nobody cares about them. Nobody will care about them in the future. If they did die, no one would care. It’d be more like “Oh yeah, I remember them” and nothing much else. The only good thing that comes from the Chargers existing is a balanced league in regards to division and conference alignment, but an expansion team can easily bring balance back. There’s no use for the team. The Spanos family will continually lose money until they unplug this team. At least with teams like the Cardinals, a good streak or a couple firings or a splash in the draft or FA can help keep fan interest, but not with this sorry bunch. This is a failed organization and its next to impossible that they stop being failures. Just take they money you’ve made and run. Leave the league and go buy yourself a nice island or something. Nobody cares, nobody will care, and you will be nothing more than an afterthought.