The Los Angeles Chargers Are Not My Football Team

I read an article the other day written by Justin Halpern on ‘The Ringer’ which told a San Diego Chargers story so similar to mine, I was inspired to write my own. I’m a San Diego Native and a Die-hard Chargers fan currently living in Los Angeles (Culver City). I’ve been trying to explain how this move makes me feel, but I haven’t really been able to find the words to truly describe the letdown I feel as my San Diego Chargers officially belong to another city.

I’ve LOVED the Chargers my entire life. I never played football, but I could not get enough of watching football at any and every level. My first memories of heartbreak were not from girls on the playground, they were a result of my Chargers choking year after year, but I continued to love them and never even considered turning my back on them.

I moved up to Los Angeles just a few weeks after graduating from high school in 2009. I got into the wrong crowd a bit towards the end of my senior year and got a taste of the trouble that could be waiting for me down that path. So while the majority of my friends went off to college, I moved to Torrance, California and immediately landed a job at the Gardena Home Depot. I was 18 years old, didn’t know much about life but I knew that I wanted to “make it”. Los Angeles has a way of expediting the growing up process for you, especially if you’re on your own. In what seemed like a blink of the eye, I went from riding beach cruisers through Pacific Beach, hangin’ with friends at the Belmont Park Arcade and going to parties at SDSU; to, working full time on my own in a city of 10 million people, stuck in traffic, a thick yellow layer of smog, stuck in traffic, freakin’ Dodgers fans EVERYWHERE, and some more traffic. It was also the first time in my life that bills would arrive in the mail with my name on them. Rent and bills are not very exciting when you’re 18.

The first few months were extremely tough. I did not like this city. I still do not like this city. I honestly don’t see what there is to like about it. It’s not like you get a break from traffic on weekends. The beaches are as gridlocked as the I405. Hollywood is cool I guess. If you’re “someone enough” to not wait in a line at a club, you’ve pretty much made it in Hollywood. Maybe you’re even cool enough to get a table with some other really cool people struggling with the same identity crisis of… “What the hell does being Hollywood mean and how can we dress and act as Hollywood as possible”. That scene was not even worth attempting for me.

There was really only one thing that I looked forward to on a weekly basis, my Bolts were almost always televised locally (only because they were the closest team, NOT because people actually cared enough to watch them). Better believe I cared enough. Shoot, I hardly missed a snap that season and the Bolts were very good. Every single Sunday I would somehow manage to shift and slide my hours around with my coworkers if my schedule conflicted with the game. I’d sit at my place, usually by myself, wearing my #85 jersey, cheering as loud as I could at the TV screen. I was in multiple group chats with my friends from San Diego and we talked Chargers Football all damn day. I’d randomly call my buddy Eric and we’d talk to each other like we were sports radio hosts, “Let’s go to Eric down in Scripps Ranch, S.D. Eric we’re talkin’ Chargers football, what are your keys for a victory this afternoon?” We could easily go back and forth for hours. San Diego Chargers football undoubtedly played a pivotal roll in getting me through my first 6 months in this miserable city of Los Angeles.

The Chargers finished the 2009 season with a record of 13–3 then were shockingly but inevitably bounced in the divisional round to the mightily inferior ‘God Damn Jets’ led by the one and only Mark ‘Butt Fumble’ Sanchez. A season that ended with us having to say goodbye to our beloved L.T. following Nate Kaeding providing us with one of the biggest chokes in NFL history.

No need to elaborate on this picture. You know this face. Little did we know, this would basically mark the end of the San Diego Super Chargers as we knew them. The next 7 seasons they won 9 games or fewer. They made the playoffs once more in 2013 by barely eeking out a victory over the Chiefs second and third string players by virtue of a missed chip shot field goal in a week 17 game that was meaningless for Kansas City. The Chargers were once again depleted by injuries and were defeated in Denver 24–17 in the Divisional Round. A game in which they trailed 17–0 heading into the 4th quarter and almost made an incredible playoff game comeback. ‘Almost’, a word so often used when describing chargers games and seasons. If you would have told me right then that my San Diego Chargers would not play in another playoff game, ever, I would have assumed you were on drugs or completely delusional.

So, now its 2017, I am somehow still in Los Angeles and the chargers wrapped up yet another injury depleted, disappointing season. I haven’t quite “made it”, nor am I really trying to “make it” by L.A.’s definition. But I am doing just fine and I love the Chargers now just as I did 7 years ago when they were all I really had. I’ve changed, grown, and matured, had ups, had downs, challenges, set backs, relationships, breakups, you name it. The San Diego Chargers have never left my side. Whether they were good or bad they were still my Bolts. Lost in Los Angeles, the Chargers were all that I had to represent who I am and where I come from. If you’re from Los Angeles you might have more money, more style, more friends than I do, but you do not have San Diego in your blood. That is something you will never have.

Unfortunately, not much has changed with the Chargers. Every year we just sit back and wait for the inevitable to occur. Ugly games, 4th quarter collapses, poorly managed clocks, Marlon Mcree’s fumbled INT, Rivers pick 6, Ryan Leaf, Ryan Tannehill’s one big game of the season, Kaeding Choke, “well look at that, Jammer got burned”, “Oh no, Keenan’s knee again?!”, “There goes another RB. Someone call Donald Brown and get him off the couch”. Oh and how could I forget my personal favorite. 4th and 29, Ray Rice gets 30 yards on a screen pass straight up the seam to ice a must win game!? I’m sure we can all add to this list. I’ve only been alive for half of their existence. Whether its injuries, bad coaching, or just straight up chokes, the chargers will find ways to lose their most important games. But we continue to show up and we continue to support our football team. I could walk around the Q parking lot before any game of the season and run into at least 15 friends from middle school and high school who felt and still feel the same way I do.

Okay sure, maybe we don’t sell out games, or maybe we sell our tickets to the other team’s fans. Sorry, we aren’t in Ohio, Wisconsin, or some other city in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a football team to keep us occupied on Sunday’s. We’re talking about America’s finest city. I can think of about 20 different places I’d rather watch them get crushed by the AFC West than at 50 year old Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium. But you better believe there are millions of people watching them on Sunday’s, most likely wearing Powder Blues (NFL’s finest jersey), with a Stone IPA in their hand, cheering for a bolt victory and yearning for just one Super Bowl victory before we die. That’s all we ultimately desire. One win in one Super Bowl.

Well, San Diego, it is not coming. Dean Spanos, quite possibly the most self-absorbed, narcissistic man affiliated with the NFL, happens to be the owner of our San Diego Chargers. We could get into all the specific details of the Pro’s and Con’s of moving and staying but take it from me you’ll end up frustrated and confused with the end results still not changing. The bottom line is he is not willing to do what’s necessary to build a stadium in San Diego because he will make more money using someone else’s stadium in Los Angeles. So, the Bolts are GONE.

When I heard the news that they were leaving I immediately started to reflect back over the last 15–20 years of Chargers memories. I’ve never quite understood what the problem is. Year after year it seems there is something missing with the Chargers. Even with Hall of Fame quarterbacks and all the talent they could ask for, there is still a piece to the puzzle that is absent or out of place. Then suddenly, after 26 years of heartbreak ending in ugly divorce I thought, “Dean Spanos is the only common denominator. Dean Spanos is the problem”.

It’s now all so clear. He does not care about winning or losing. He is in it for the money, nothing more, and nothing less. An attitude like that at the top of an organization will surely have a trickledown effect no matter what the sport or situation is. Why else would the Chargers let top notch talent walk every year and play hardball with one of the leagues premier safeties and the Defensive Rookie of the Year?

My dad is also a San Diego native, born there in 1956 and has been a Padres season ticket holder since 1984. He’s as real as it gets when it comes to loyalty for San Diego sports. He told me a year ago that this is exactly what would happen. He had no doubt that Spanos would rather sleep in the Rams basement rent free while collecting some cash via Personal Seat Licenses than fork up the dough to build a stadium and possibly a legacy in beautiful San Diego, California. He is afraid he will fail. He does not believe in his ability to be successful on his own because he hasn’t succeeded. He can’t figure how to put a Super Bowl team on the field. Players don’t respect him. Fans don’t like him. He fires the coaches he should keep. He hires the coaches that aren’t good coaches. He even failed at his bogus attempt to get the city of San Diego to build him a stadium with the Prop C vote. He has not accomplished anything as the owner of the Chargers. He is still only playing the cards that his daddy dealt him. He lacks fire, passion, commitment and identity, just as so many Chargers coaches, players and teams have. He is the loser and he will continue to lose.

Go to L.A. Dean. The Clippers and Rams cannot wait to no longer be the laughing stock of Los Angeles.

I don’t hate Dean, I don’t know Dean, and he is the one that will have to look himself in the mirror every day knowing he could have been great but settled for far less. San Diego loves the Chargers. We could and would have loved Dean too. All he had to do was for once show us that he gives a damn about anything or anyone more than he cares about how many commas are on his bank statements. Instead, he makes the most selfish decision he’s made thus far.

Here I am, once again heartbroken by the San Diego Chargers, exactly how I felt as a young boy watching them come up just short. I can’t help but laugh in someone’s face when they tell me to “just pick another team”. I guess that’s what separates die-hard fans from the rest of them… The ability to hop on a bandwagon. Love is not something you can just decide to have. It takes years to develop and grow. When you love someone or something and they show no regard for you or your feelings, it hurts. I think much more goes into the healing process than… “No big deal, I’ll just get another one.”

At this point I am only certain of two things, I will not be at the StubHub Center on Sunday afternoons and the Los Angeles Chargers are NOT my football team.