San Diego Losing Its Football Team Spirit

Los Angeles may be lurking with a plan to steal away the San Diego Chargers but San Diegans appear too exhausted--emotionally, politically and financially--to fight to retain their once-beloved NFL team. At least for now.

From sports bars to City Hall, there is little serious talk of blocking the bully from the north from trying to win away a National Football League franchise that once wowed the town with wide-open offenses and winning.

Resignation runs so high that some fans are already considering shifting allegiances to other teams.

The city’s best hope of maintaining its 42-year grip on the Chargers could be if Los Angeles fumbles in its bid to build a new stadium.

The Los Angeles City Council approved a redevelopment project this week that could pave the way for a stadium in downtown Los Angeles, but the project has many hurdles to overcome, including a threatened lawsuit by the county government.

Still, the overtures to San Diego have begun. The team agreed this week to move its training camp to Carson. And owner Alex Spanos has made clear his desire to move to a bigger, newer stadium--something taxpayers in San Diego have made clear they don’t want to finance.

Many cities would respond to such tactics with outrage and urgent counterproposals. But San Diego has been pummeled by years of controversy over the city’s financial subsidies for both the Chargers and baseball’s Padres. Politicians are reluctant to even float the idea of spending public money on a new stadium to keep the Chargers happy and profitable.

Fans and politicians alike also are less than cheery about a team that went 1-15 in 2000 and 5-11 in 2001--capped by a nine-game losing streak at the end of last season.

Even the normally pugnacious sports-bar crowd is subdued--with some fans starting to consider rooting for other teams, including the Chargers’ archenemy, the Oakland Raiders.

“Most fans feel: ‘Hey, there’s nothing we can do about it, if they really want to move,’” said Rey Pineda, manager of San Diego Brewing Co., a sports bar down the road from Qualcomm Stadium, the 35-year-old facility where the Chargers play.

“One guy told me if the Chargers go to L.A., he’s going to become a Raiders fan,” Pineda said. “For a San Diegan, that’s about as radical as you can get.”

Although the city may yet rise to the challenge of keeping the Chargers from leaving, the issue has not registered on the civic to-do list.

“I think some of our leaders are in denial,” said San Diego political consultant John Dadian. “They’ve got to realize this may really happen. The Chargers are a civic asset, and we could lose them.”

While billionaire Philip Anschutz and Los Angeles officials apparently continue to maneuver for a slice of land east of Staples Center in the South Park neighborhood, San Diego officials have been absorbed with other things.

“To be honest, I don’t think anybody thought this [the Chargers potential move] could be happening,” said Gina Champion, chairwoman of a downtown business group. “Only in the last few days did people begin to think it could become a reality.”

If secrecy was a strategy by Anschutz and allies to gain a step on San Diego--like a receiver faking a defender before turning on the speed--it has worked.

“We just don’t have enough information about what is going on to even have an argument or discussion about,” said Mitch Mitchell, vice president for public policy at the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

Mayor Dick Murphy has led the push to keep construction on track for the Padres’ new downtown ballpark. But he prefers not to talk about the Chargers, except to say he has his staff looking at the issue and talking to team management.

“We support the Chargers having a winning team,” Murphy said in a prepared statement. “If they believe moving their preseason training camp out of San Diego will facilitate winning, we support them.”

That kind of mild talk does little to reassure hard-core fans.

“Where’s the mayor?” asked Joe Davidson, a computer technician and die-hard Charger fan since the glory seasons of Dan Fouts in the early 1980s. “In other cities, if a team even hints about moving, the mayor gets mad as hell. Here, the mayor says, ‘Gee, it’s their team.’”

(The move would reverse history: The Chargers of the fledgling American Football League came to San Diego in 1960 from Los Angeles.)

One doomsday scenario holds that the Chargers and the Padres may both soon leave town, while city officials are frozen with indecision.

“San Diego could end up with two stadiums and no teams if our city leaders fail to develop and execute an intelligent strategy for dealing with the Chargers and the Padres,” said attorney Michael J. Aguirre.

San Diego has seen other teams move or fold. Half a dozen professional basketball teams have fled San Diego, including the Clippers, who moved to Los Angeles in 1984.

Losing a team to L.A. only exacerbates the pain. This is a city where bumper stickers read, “We Don’t Give a Damn How They Do It in Los Angeles” and where the 1990s slow-growth movement rallied to the cry, “Stop Los Angelesization Now!”

Powerful San Diegans may not have rallied to their team yet, but they are not without barbs for their foe.

“Los Angelenos certainly don’t support pro football,” said City Councilman Byron Wear. “They didn’t support the Rams, the Express or the Raiders. Why would anybody think that L.A. sports fans would be any less apathetic now than they were in the past?”

Some locals are also mocking the thought of moving preseason camp from UC San Diego and the leafy, resort environs of La Jolla to the more middle-class and industrialized Carson.

Nick Canepa, sports columnist for the San Diego Union-Tribune, wrote Friday of driving past Carson and being struck by its heat, smog and “beautiful, massive oil refinery.” Wrote Canepa: “Leaving La Jolla for Carson during the summer is stupid.”

Under the five-year deal announced Thursday, the Chargers are moving their six-week preseason camp starting in 2003 to a facility being built by Anschutz on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills.

Chargers General Manager John Butler said the move will help the Chargers bond as a team and focus on football, away from the distractions of San Diego. The explanation seemed to placate at least some San Diego fans, to the exasperation of radio sports talk-show provocateur Lee “Hacksaw” Hamilton.

Hamilton insists that the Chargers will be no less likely to go out on the town in Los Angeles County.

“I don’t think they’ll take away their car keys in Carson,” Hamilton shot back at a caller who supported the camp relocation. “I think they’ll be out clubbin’ on their off nights.”

The current lack of will for a Keep-the-Chargers campaign is also rooted in the city’s previous experiences with pro sports.

In 1998--flush with baseball fever after the Padres’ World Series appearance--60% of San Diego voters approved building a downtown ballpark for the team. But nonstop litigation by opponents has put the project two years behind schedule.

At the same time, a clause in a 1995 contract to authorize $78 million worth of improvements at Qualcomm Stadium has returned to haunt the city. In exchange for the Chargers’ promise to remain in San Diego until 2020, the city agreed to buy unsold tickets.

That seemed like a good deal when the Chargers were winning and drawing bumper crowds. But after the team reached the 1995 Super Bowl, its fortunes, and attendance, plummeted. The city has forked out $25.3 million for unsold tickets, some of which are then given to youth groups.

What’s more, the stadium expansion contract gave the Chargers an out. The clause allows the team to shop for a new home after 2004 if it exceeds the NFL cap on player salaries.

“They can trigger, with very little effort, the conditions that would allow them to leave,” said county Supervisor Ron Roberts. “If they decide to leave, I don’t know how you can stop them. And the NFL has never been able to stop a team from relocating.”

Chargers owner Spanos caused a furor two years ago when he told a reporter that he would like a new stadium to replace aging Qualcomm, one of the oldest in the league.

Caught in a small television market, the Chargers, like the Padres, insist that they need a more lucrative stadium deal.

With the Padres controversy and the ticket-guarantee flap in the air, the idea of a new, publicly financed stadium has little public support.

“There is a fear factor” among politicians about discussing the issue, said Supervisor Roberts.

After the training camp move was announced, a public opinion poll by a local television station found that a plurality of San Diegans wishes the team would remain in town. But a large majority opposes spending public money to build a new stadium.

“I think this community is weary of stadium controversies,” said Gary Schons, sports fan and attorney-in-charge of the San Diego branch of the state attorney general’s office. “No one is going to sweat the Chargers leaving if keeping them means going through the agony of trying to build a new stadium.”