Chargers May Take Game Down Under : Exhibition Contest Against Cowboys May Be Played in Australia in ’89
If talks with Australian promoters are successful, the Chargers and the Dallas Cowboys could be men at work in the land down under next summer.
A proposed game between the two teams would take place either at the beginning or the end of the 1989 exhibition season and would constitute a fifth preseason game. Charger owner Alex Spanos is especially excited about the prospect of bringing American rules football to Australia.
“I think it’s something we are all looking forward to,” Spanos said. “As long as it doesn’t intrude on our football operation, I think it’s great.”
Steve Ortmayer, Chargers director of football operations, said, “Anytime you can get an extra preseason game, particularly with a young team like ours, you have to be interested in something like this.”
The Cowboys approached the Chargers last year about the possibility of playing in Australia this summer, but the teams had to postpone plans for a year when Australian promoters couldn’t iron out all the details.
Ortmayer says he is waiting to hear back from promoters and “a very strong group out of Australia” who are still working out a joint corporate sponsorship to underwrite the event.
The Cowboys and the Chargers would need league approval to play each other in Australia. But league spokesman Jim Heffernan said Tuesday he didn’t expect such approval would be a problem.
“It looks like there is a definite NFL interest,” Ortmayer said.
Said Spanos: “This kind of thing is very good public relations.”
Passport football. It’s the NFL’s hottest game in town.
The NFL dipped its toes overseas five years ago when the St. Louis Cardinals played the Minnesota Vikings in London’s Wembley Stadium. Three years after that, Wembley promoters made a financial killing on the first “American Bowl,” a preseason opener between the Cowboys and the Chicago Bears.
The third American Bowl will take place in London this summer between the Miami Dolphins and the San Francisco 49ers. The Vikings will play a preseason contest against the Bears in Goteborg, Sweden, in a game underwritten by a Swedish auto maker.
Minnesota General Manager Mike Lynn also is working on arranging a preseason game against the Cardinals in Moscow. “We’d be the underdog,” Lynn said. “Everybody would be cheering for the Big Red.”
Dallas General Manager Tex Schramm says he would love for the Cowboys to play in Moscow one day, too.
Ortmayer said “corporate interest” in Australia will be the final determining factor in whether the Charger-Cowboy game takes place.
Last December, Melbourne, Australia, was host for a Western Athletic Conference football game between Brigham Young and Colorado State. Attendance was disappointing--only 8,000 people showed for the game. Two years before that, Texas El Paso played Wyoming in Melbourne in a game attended by 22,000.
San Diego State was under consideration to play New Mexico in Australia next December. But the dismal attendance at the most recent WAC game in that country made the promoters change their minds.