Chargers move impacting team more than it seems

11/27/2019 Opinion, Sports

Charger official NFL logo/ Wikicommons

With the Chargers on their bye week this week, the look into their second season as the Los Angeles Chargers hasn’t been as smooth as some had projected. Many fans and players have been adamant about their move to their small Carson, California stadium.

With their record of 4-7, the team is seeing less support in their games, due to the move away from San Diego a couple of years ago. With players and media’s complaints about the situation, the Chargers owner had heard enough about any speculation on what the team should do.

“It’s total (expletive) (expletive), OK?” Chargers owner Dean Spanos told reporters earlier in the month in response to the report on the Chargers thinking about another possible move. “We’re not going to London. We’re not going anywhere. We’re playing in Los Angeles. This is our home. This is where I’m planning to be for a long (expletive) time. Period.”

With another season where the team has been outshined by their soon to be stadium partners Los Angeles Rams, the Chargers are in the midst of problems on and off the field. The new SoFi stadium is a state of the art architectural phenomenon, holding 70,000 fans and hoping to rebuild the fan base that the Chargers built for many years in San Diego.

The team has struggled due to their star quarterback Phillip Rivers having one of his worst seasons to date, and running back Melvin Gordan missing the first three games of the season holding out hoping to receive a big contract. Players have shown their frustrations this season on the problems with the team’s relocation and lack of fans.

“It was crazy,” running back Melvin Gordon said. “They started playing their theme music. I don’t know what we were doing — that little soundtrack, what they do on their home games. I don’t know why we played that.“

“I don’t know what that was,” Gordan said. “Don’t do that at our own stadium … It already felt like it was their stadium … I don’t understand that.”

Even in a prime time slot for the Charger faithful to showcase their true team spirit, the fans were massively outnumbered by the traveling Pittsburg fans and embarrassed them on and off the field.

Owner Dean Spanos tried earlier in 2016 to try and push for the city of San Diego to build a new stadium, pouring millions of his dollars into efforts that ultimately failed. All these attempts by the organization to stay in San Diego were made in hopes they didn’t have to relocate the franchise and build up a new fan base.

“I don’t want to go to L.A.,” Spanos said on the move to Los Angeles. “I want to stay.”

Ultimately the move to Los Angeles cost the team a mighty $550 million relocation fee, something that Spanos could have tried to use for the team in San Diego. But with this much money being put on the table, Spanos felt the move to a bigger market would help the team in the long run. Chargers faithful are hoping for a change in the coming years, but with Spanos taking a stand on their relocation, the only changes that seem imminent are players and coaches losing their jobs.

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Morgan Smith