This past Sunday may have been the final home games for the San Diego Chargers and the Saint Louis Rams. The owners of both teams have lobbied their fellow NFL owners for permission to move to Los Angeles, where they believe they will find riches if a new stadium is built somewhere in Los Angeles County.
Rams fans don’t have much of an argument, since the Rams themselves relocated to Missouri after a couple of generations in Los Angeles (after having begun as the Cleveland Rams in the 1940s). Nevertheless, both the Saint Louis and San Diego situation seem to be clear cut cases of corporate greed in the hopes of extorting public subsidies. That horse left the barn years ago. That’s just the way it is today. The NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball demand state of the art arenas with gourmet food courts --at taxpayer expense.
It will be the last home game for Chargers OR the Rams. Not both. The choice for LA is either the Rams or a joint offer of the Chargers + Oakland Raiders. I don’t know why the Raiders (or LA for that matter) are interested in moving that team back to LA. That was tried back in the 80s and 90s. The LA fans never embraced the Raiders very much, and the Raiders ended up fleeing back to Oakland.
I live in San Diego and have been a Chargers fan for decades. This is really a sad situation. Perhaps San Diego simply can’t afford to have an NFL team anymore, not if the taxpayers have cough up hundreds of millions in order to further enrich greedy billionaires.
The only professional football games I have ever been to were Rams games in LA when I was a very little kid. Fond memories! I have zero interest in football, but there’s a sentimental appeal to the Rams coming back. No interest in the Raiders, which had no appeal to me when they were here. And the Chargers don’t belong in LA! In any event, we have plenty of college football here to keep us happy (not that it would ever occur to me to go, unless someone gave me tickets to the Rose Bowl).
It’s interesting that franchise relocations seem to happen so frequently in the NFL, NBA, and NHL, by contrast to major league baseball – in which, to the best of my recollection, the Montreal Expos’ move to Washington, D.C. is the only franchise relocation in the last 45 years, since the expansion Washington Senators moved to Texas and became the Rangers in 1971. (The original Washington Senators became the Minnesota Twins ten years before that, and there were other relocations in the 1950s and 1960s. Hardly any since then.)
I don’t see the Raiders enjoying an LA move. Greater LA will likely embrace their long-lost Rams, and might accept the Chargers if that comes to pass…but I suspect that they’d prefer the Rams.
For the Chargers, I think it’s all about location. Moving to LA opens an easier fan access to games…altho fans from the SD area may not like traveling 2 hours each way for home games.
That’s how Indianapolis got their Colts in the 70s ( except secretly in the middle of the night in Mayflower moving trucks)and how Baltimore got their Ravens. Greed in sports has existed for years unfortunately .
It surprises me that anyone would think that greed in professional sports was something “new”. And a team moving to LA. We have had the NFL dangling this carrot in front of us for YEARS. ( The owners love having a large market that they can use as a threat to their current city. Gimme what I want or we move to LA!! They really don’t want to loose that.
We go to college football games and I really thought that the absence of pro ball was one of the good things about living in LA. (and that’s right, I’m talking about you Raider fan)
Corporate greed? Is that just a convenient phrase? No corporations involved in the decisions. NFL rules require teams (except the Packers) to have majority owners that are individuals. So it’s individual greed. And individuals have always been greedy. Even, maybe especially, billionaires.
There are 2 proposals. One is that the Chargers and Raiders share a stadium in Carson City. The CEO of Disney is a public backer of that plan. Disney owns ESPN. But he doesn’t vote, the owners vote. The other is that the Rams move to a stadium in Inglewood. Both of those plans won’t be approved, but one of them probably will. Whichever owners can do a better job lobbying the other owners.
San Diego is not going to be crying over the Chargers leaving. Our city is sick of the billionaire owner trying to get taxpayers to pay for a new stadium. Our city has so many great things going for it that not having professional football here will soon be forgotten by most. Surf’s up!
By the way, baseball’s hands are not clean in this matter. The Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers less than one month before the start of the season. The Chicago White Sox extorted taxpayer monies from Illinois government by stepping to the brink of re-locating to Florida (or Seattle). The NY Yankees stated that sure as shootin’ they were on their way to Northern New Jersey, until NJ voters handed the team a stupendous failure by refusing to approve a taxpayer-financed baseball stadium in a voter referendum. The Miami Marlins complained for years about playing in the privately-owned Joe Robbie Stadium and thus often threatened to leave south Florida unless government officials came up with a plan for a new stadium, which incidentally was marred in allegations of municipal fraud and corruption. Prior to the relocation of the Montreal Expos to Washington DC, major league officials strong-armed local DC government leaders into approving public subsidies for a new stadium. Otherwise, MLB said, the Expos would move elsewhere or just close shop altogether.
What’s interesting is the reason LA still has no team is the city refuses to make the taxpayers pay for a stupid stadium. All of the arenas and stadiums built in the last 50 odd years have been done with only private money.
LA was thought to be the favorite for a team when the NFL last expanded, and had everything covered, but Houston had taxpayer money, so they won. I’m proud that my city doesn’t cave to NFL greed. I’m perfectly content with our college teams.
As for baseball, the Dodgers play in the 3rd oldest park in use, and I can’t ever imagine them leaving it. Compare that to the Atlanta Braves moving out of a stadium built for the 96 Olympics. Really? The USC Trojans play in a stadium built for the '32 games.
I’m not suggesting that MLB’s hands are clean. I simply find it interesting that there have been so many fewer relocations in baseball than in the three other major sports, and wonder why that is.
I’m surprised that the owners appear to be serious about putting any team in LA. Los Angeles may be the 2nd biggest media market and all that, but it’s far more valuable to the personal wealth of the owners as a bargaining threat. Since LA lost its last NFL team decades ago, about three quarters of the rest of the teams have extorted their host cities into funding new stadiums by threatening to move to LA. If LA actually gets a team at last the owners best extortion tool will be gone.
If the Chargers move to LA I’m through with them. I’m not going to drive a hundred miles through LA traffic to attend any of their games. I’m not going to watch their telecasts.
But I WILL drive through LA traffic to see the Rose Bowl this year. Stanford is a team we can get behind. And we were lucky enough to get four tickets. Go Cardinal!
A correction to Post 7. It is the City of Carson not Carson City. Carson City is Nevada. People who live or have lived in Carson do not like to have their city called Carson City.
The Seattle Seahawks became the Los Angeles Seahawks for about 10 days twenty years ago, until the threat of lawsuits by the Seattle-area county government (owner of the Kingdome) gave the NFL cold feet, thus NFL leadership told the team owner to stay put or sell the team. He sold it. I’m sure the NFL had Seattle’s victorious Pilots-MLB lawsuit/settlement of the 1970s in mind.
A few years after the Rams left southern California, the networks began to give grumpy hints that they wouldn’t pony-up a new megamillion TV contract if there was no team in Los Angeles. Two things happened that obliterated that bluff; 1) Fox Network out-bid CBS for NFL broadcasting rights. 2) Statistics revealed that TV ratings for NFL football in metropolitan Los Angeles WERE HIGHER, despite the lack of a team. Thus, ever since the advent of mega-deals in broadcast TV, the NFL has been in no hurry to return to Los Angeles, particularly since the taxpayers there have been reluctant to subsidize an arena. I read that the present Rams owner Kronke owns land that he would like to place taxpayer-funded stadium upon, but again the price may be too steep for the locals.
Saint Louis Browns = Baltimore Orioles
Philadelphia A’s = Kansas City A’s = Oakland A’s
Boston Braves = Milwaukee Braves = Atlanta Braves
Brooklyn Dodgers = Los Angeles Dodgers
NY Giants = San Francisco Giants
Washington Senators (AL) = Minnesota Twins
Washington Senators II = Texas Rangers
Seattle Pilots = Milwaukee Brewers
Montreal Expos = Washington Nationals
and my favorite football vagabonds…
Cleveland Rams = Los Angeles Rams = St. Louis Rams
Chicago Cardinals = St. Louis Cardinals = Arizona Cardinals
The owners love having a large market that they can use as a threat to their current city. Gimme what I want or we move to LA!! They really don’t want to loose that.