Like a pigeon’s droppings, the strongest report yet that Dean Spanos will move the Chargers north in 2017 plopped on San Diego early Wednesday evening.

Hope y’all had your umbrella out, San Diego.

“The Chargers,” wrote Adam Schefter of NFL rights-holder ESPN, “have notified NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, and other league owners, of their intent to move to Los Angeles for the 2017 season, sources said.”

The Chargers, per the report, plan to announce the move as early as Thursday. (Italics are mine.)


“But,” Schefter reported, “as one league source cautioned Wednesday night, Chargers chairman Dean Spanos had yet to send a formal relocation letter to the NFL, yet to notify public officials in Los Angeles or San Diego of the team’s move, or even tell the members of the San Diego organization about his plans. The source insisted nothing is final.”

In terms of style, Spanos comes off here as a full-fledged weasel.

There’s a decent way to do this, Dean, if indeed you’ve made the so-called decision; and that is, you make sure that you, Dean, not Adam Schefter and his whisperers, are the first to let San Diego know something of this magnitude.

Shouldn’t have done San Diego like that, Dean. And, to be clear, I’m not talking of the business decision itself, which, as a separate matter may be subject to change, insofar as the announced L.A. intent was expected due to it being, at the least, the hardest yank yet on the San Diego money tree.


San Diego has helped to enrich the Spanos family-owned Chargers since 1984, has poured money and emotion into the franchise since 1961.

Whether they were cheering the Original Fearsome Foursome, Air Coryell, LaDainian Tomlinson or Joey Bosa, generations of folks here have treated the team not as a business investment, thought it can be that, but as family.

They took more lumps than the Three Stooges combined, yet a lot of ‘em hung in there.

As nasty as these NFL shakedowns are, as typical as it is for a team owner to use others to break bad apparent news in the ceaseless Stadium Game, one wonders if Spanos just made the mistake of confusing Chargers fans — customers -- with the grumpy hoteliers and the politicians they sponsor.


If Spanos or his whiz-bang aide on stadium poker, Mark Fabiani, can inform their NFL benefactors of the so-called decision, then they also could’ve let San Diego know, straight from Dean’s mouth.

Man to city.

A video on the team website, say. A phone call to one of San Diego’s reps. And, the Spanoses’ hand at the poker table would’ve suffered not at all from that one simple act of decency.

The question now is, are the Chargers really gone?


Or, as forecast under this byline after the team’s 2016 season finale, was L.A. a card that had to be played regardless of the League’s true end game?

Who knows, but understand that the so-called decision was all but inevitable.

Once the other NFL owners gave Spanos the L.A. card last winter by green-lighting him to move in 2017, the logical outcome was that he drop the card within a game that hasn’t yielded him the desired stadium deal in 15-plus years.

Now that has happened.


It’s convenient that the announcement comes within 24 hours before Mayor Kevin Faulconer’s state of the city address.

Again, these are shakedowns, rooted in plausible business-driven scenarios.

At minimum, the goal is to find out just what San Diego and, for that matter, Oakland, a sister city in this saga, is willing to pay to remain tethered to an NFL team.

On that question the NFL, a $13-billion industry in substantial part due its ability to squeeze subsidies out of municipalities, has moved, inexorably, closer to an answer.


Does make one want to take a soapy shower, though.

Tom.Krasovic@SDUnionTribune.com; Twitter: SDUTKrasovic