Interview with a parrot
January 12, 2017ESPN’s Matt Bowen discusses Gregg Williams
January 12, 2017Editor’s Note: One year ago, Kyle Welch wrote about what a possible relocation of the Chargers would mean to San Diego. With the news of that relocation, we revisit.
After toying around the idea for the last decade or so, the NFL owners will convene on Tuesday to decide which combinations of teams and stadiums to put in Los Angeles, California. Though no one really knows whatâs going to happen or how. There are two proposed stadiums, three teams asking to be allowed to move, lots of unknowns, and billions of dollars at stake. One stadium proposal is being touted as âNFL Disney Worldâ and the other actually involves a Disney Chairman and C.E.O., and the most probable outcome anyone can discern as of Monday involves a shotgun marriage officiated by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.1
The problem with placing a team in Los Angeles â the sprawling Southern California mess of freeways and strip malls that doubles as the second largest market in the United States â is that a team will not be created to fill the void of untapped market potential in L.A. Rather, a team will be moved to Los Angeles; taken from a place currently hosting the team; un-located from its current location and re-located to its new destination in LA.
The problem with places (often, anyway), is that people live in them. People that already pay for tickets to see these teams, and already buy merchandise with team colors and logos and player names, and already devote dozens of hours for years watching these teams and hundreds more hoping that these teams will succeed on their cityâs behalf. While many residents of these cities donât give a hoot about professional sports and live complete lives without gamedays and ânext seasonâs, many others â citizens of the potentially “unlocated,” if you will â develop emotional attachments to these incorporated entities and would be hurt by their departure. Such unfounded loyalty is probably stupid and naive, but itâs a stupidity and naivete upon which the NFLâs built an empire.
The candidate cities to have a team wrested from their hands are St. Louis (now-home of the Rams), Oakland (current residence of the Raiders), and San Diego (present domicile of the Chargers). All of them unquestionably have thousands of fans who, if not adore at least support their teams as some sort of birthright or civic duty. One or two of these cities will lose their football team. And it will suck.
We know it will suck because it has happened before to dozens of American professional sports teams in dozens of cities, and I know this because I am a Cleveland Browns fan, and it wasnât that long ago that my hometown team was lost. (Well, it wasnât âlostâ â I know where it went.) A younger version of me had a front row seat to the Browns departure from Cleveland, and now, twenty-one years later, I may have a front row seat to the Chargers departure from San Diego.
Six-year-old me didnât have many problems in 1995. I liked playing baseball and coloring and playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis (I donât think I ever did beat Dr. Robotnik in the last level). My pet peeves were bedtime and parents and my little sister. I was becoming vaguely aware that girls were different than boys and there was something I liked about that, but it was still largely a mystery (that wouldnât change, actually). So six-year-old me had it pretty good and didnât know a damn thing about stadium leases or market potential or the allocation of public funds or the sin tax, and I was okay with that.
But I did know some things about sports. I liked sports and I liked the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Cavaliers and the Cleveland Browns because they played sports (again, which I liked) and they were close and my dad liked them and I could go to their games and watch them on television.
Later in 1995, Art Modell announced that the Cleveland Browns would be moving to Baltimore the following season. I donât remember the press conference or any salient detail of any play the Browns had that season. But I do remember the last Browns game in Municipal Stadium.
It was December 17, 1995, against the Cincinnati Bengals. I sat on my family’s living room floor, watching the game on a big old box of a television from Montgomery Ward made when TVs doubled as pieces of furniture. I remember the bleachers being yanked out by fans, and the signs about how the team shouldnât leave, and the evening news after the game. I distinctly remember trying to wrap my tiny head around the fact that the Browns were leaving â like, gone. Like, they werenât going to play in Cleveland any more. The Browns would cease to exist.
There would be no more Browns games. I remember being sad, and not because there wouldnât be any more Browns games (again, I didnât even comprehend the fundamental concept). But I was sad because everyone else was sad. The evening news broadcasters and the fans walking out of Municipal Stadium and my family â everyone was sad. And that made me indescribably sad, even though I really had no idea what the hell was happening.
So the Browns left. Over the next few years, my love of sports grew fonder and my understanding of concepts like death and taxes became slightly more intelligible. I rooted for the Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Cavaliers because they were still there, and I rooted for the Jacksonville Jaguars because I thought their uniforms were cool and the Green Packers because I liked Brett Favre and I was a front-running little shit. There are pictures of me wearing a Green Bay Packers toboggan cap and a big, puffy Starter jacket for the then-defunct Cleveland Browns — my head stuck in the present, and my torso torn between the past and the future. In 1999, the Browns returned and I rooted for them because it was my birthright and civic duty and things were the same as before but they were also different.
Now itâs 2016, and things are the same as they were in 1995 and 1999. The Browns exist, I root for the Browns, the Browns are bad. But things are also different. I donât live in Northeast Ohio, and I know way too damn much about stadium leases and market potential and the allocation of public funds and the sin tax. Now I live in San Diego, and owner Dean Spano is trying to skip town with the Chargers just like Art Modell did with the Browns in 1995, and the fans are largely powerless to stop it. Itâs been strange and depressing, like watching a sad movie based on your own life.
Itâs tricky knowing what to do with a local team when you move somewhere. Before moving to San Diego, I had no feelings or opinions on the Chargers â positive or negative. I regarded them with intense neutrality. On second thought, I did like of one of their shades of blue. But thatâs about it. The Chargers were otherwise no more to me than another team in the AFC with whom I had no gripes.
Upon moving to San Diego, I found Chargers fans to be agreeable enough. I found them amusing, harmless, cute even2 â but they’re one of the least universally obnoxious fan bases Iâve encountered (Iâm looking at you, Patriots fans).
If there was a continuum for overall attitude toward a team, with 0 being utter revulsion, and 100 being unconditional love, Iâd be at a 91 for the Browns (falling short of 100 because of my lack of physical proximity, my moral opposition to taking anything too seriously, my lack of merchandise purchases in the last calendar year, my refusal to paint my face, my inability to be totally insane, and the fact that I suspect I secretly hate them), and Iâd be at a 53 for the Chargers. I gave the Chargers my apathetic approval, and Chargers fans didnât dump a beer on my head every time I wore Browns gear in public. It seemed like a fair truce to me. I also felt Iâd be an ungrateful guest and kind of a dick to root against the local team.
In fact, Cleveland and San Diego fans ought to identify with one another more than one would guess. An obvious starting point is that both the Cleveland Browns and San Diego Chargers have had detestable owners who wanted to move their team for their financial benefit, using a crummy stadium as an excuse. But thatâs just the start. Both the Browns and Chargers had exciting teams with beloved quarterbacks in the 1980s (Bernie Kosar and Dan Fouts) that were never able to go all the way â the two teams combined to lose half of the AFC Championship games in the 1980s.3 They miraculously avoided one another in the playoffs through the decade, meaning America was robbed of a real showdown of misfortune and angst.
Marty Schottenheimer teased and tortured both fan bases with tastes of success â Marty took the Browns to the playoffs four times and two conference championship games in the 1980s, and won 12 and 14 games with the Chargers in the mid-2000s only to lose in the playoffs. Brian Sipe â the only Brown to win league MVP in the modern era â is a San Diego native, San Diego State graduate, and current resident of San Diego. Both teams had a Kellen Winslow, though the Charger version had a much better career. Though the Browns and Chargers have been around for most of the NFLâs modern era (the Browns have played 47 seasons, the Chargers 46 uninterrupted ones), they have one Super Bowl appearance between them â and the Chargers didn’t even show up for that. Both fan bases saw their baseball teams rise to prominence in the 1990s, losing three-of-four post-strike World Series between them. Cleveland and San Diego both hate the Yankees.
While regular readers of this website are familiar with Clevelandâs title drought (after all, the siteâs name implores readers to keep waiting). But the city with the second longest active streak of title-less seasons? San Diego. Iâve spent all my life in the vicinity of the two most championship-deprived cities in the country! If I live within commuting distance of your stadium, youâre in for a world of sports-related suffering.
So there should be a sort of kinship between Browns and Chargers fans â a bond of shared misery. Though my support for the Chargers is of the most unenthusiastic variety, my opposition to them leaving is vocal. I like San Diego. I live there. It has good burritos.
San Diego will still be a nice city if the Chargers leave, but it will be diminished, however little. It will be less important, less fun, less relevant. It will be lesser. No one wishes that of a place where they live.
The NFL will be diminished, too. Just like the idea of an NBA without the Seattle Supersonics or an NFL without the Cleveland Browns seem absurd, the idea of an NFL without the San Diego Chargers seems stupid. Whatâs the fun in an NFL without the San Diego Chargers?
I think the common notions from outsiders watching the Los Angeles/NFL drama unfold from afar is that the Chargers donât mean much to the city of San Diego because itâs nice and no one cares, and if they did care then the team wouldnât be moving to begin with. Sure, the Chargers probably donât mean as much to San Diego as the Browns meant or mean to Cleveland. I think thatâs an inherent fact about warm weather cities and vacation destinations and places with a limited amount of blue collar jobs and places where you can go surfing instead of watching the second half.
But San Diego is a football town. The biggest social events in my neighborhood are NFL football Sundays, and when I ride past windows on my bike on Sunday nights the homes invariably have Sunday Night Football on the television. Even though support for the Chargers is diluted by transplant assholes like myself, San Diego loves the Chargers.
Read Lee Jenkinsâ piece on the Chargers last game at Qualcomm Stadium this season and allow him and Philip Rivers (of all people) to dispel the notion that the Chargers donât matter to San Diego.
Laughter turned to tears. Soon, there will be nowhere to tell the stories, to put the pictures, to wear the Kassim Osgood jerseys. The agony of losing a game â a pain with which Charger backers are intimately familiar â does not prepare anybody for the torture of losing a team. As Rivers pulled on his cowboy boots late Sunday, he asked about that night in â95 when the Chargers vanquished the Steelers, and 80,000 people welcomed them back to Qualcomm. He wondered how everybody fit inside. âI think of the kids who came here with their dads, and now want to take their own kids, but might never get the chance,â he said, eyes red, voice heavy. âI feel sorry for them.â
And for what? So a billionaire can move the team to Los Angeles to increase the value of his franchise? So that Roger Goodell (who’s never shown poor judgment before!) can make returning the NFL to Los Angeles a part of his “legacy”? So that old rich dudes have something to do on Sundays?
Because for whatever the Chargers mean to San Diego, they mean infinitely less to Los Angeles. No one in the league outside St. Louis, San Diego, or Oakland is protesting how the L.A. situation is being handled, because it’s not their team â not this time. It’s the same thinking that allowed people to sit on their hands when the Browns left. In short, I already lived through my own heartache and identity crisis when the Browns left Cleveland, and Iâd rather not live through the heartache and identity crisis of a million of my neighbors, coworkers, and friends.
Like Philip Rivers, I feel sorry for kids who won’t get the chance to go to Chargers games with their dads. I feel sorry because, for a few years in the 1990s, I was that kid.
- According to the L.A. Times: âOn the brink of a vote that could return the NFL to Los Angeles, a consensus is building within the league for the St. Louis Rams and San Diego Chargers to share a stadium in Inglewood. … There’s a sense that most owners know the point where they want to get â the Chargers and Rams in Inglewood â but aren’t sure of the best way to get there.â [↩]
- They do think it’s “freezing” when it’s 60 degrees, after all. [↩]
- The Chargers in 1980 and 1981, and the Browns in 1986, 1987, and 1989. [↩]
62 Comments
This is not the last of Goodell’s strategy.
Just wait til he sends Jax to London.
And he wants Buffalo in Toronto so bad, his eyelids are twitching.
This and I don’t get why there are cities, CITIES with 2 teams. Especially if they play in the same stadium. So now they are going to have 2 teams share a stadium in LA? Because that area needs 2 teams?
The whole Europe thing is such a bad idea.
Great article! Totally agree!
BUT why will this end up failing? LA failed in the NFL before. The same “slight” apathy will continue for those in south California. I don’t want to see any teams move because I have been through this. And, because the NFL will fare no better in LA than it did last time. Two teams? That just means double failure. The NFL is so popular, in everywhere but LA and Jacksonville (it seems), why have 32 teams in 30 cities when you can have 32 teams in 31 cities?
Bigger market or 2nd biggest market, doesn’t equate to financial success. LA is NOT a football town. At least when the Browns moved they went to a football town who lost their beloved Colts. And seeing the Colts play in a dome and on turf is like seeing Mike Ditka in a dress or Dennis Rodman in a suit. Yeah, I get that things change, and due to concussions, the NFL will never be the same. Change often is for the good. But this change, will not result in any more “change” (nickels and dimes) for the NFL, as I suspect football will be just as much a failure as before, but maybe a double your pleasure, two teams failing in a city that never really sold out for football… LA is a tried and failed football city…
I mean, LA loves the Dodgers so much, they show up for the 4th through 7th innings…
The only thing the town seems to embrace is the Lakers and College Football and Basketball…
I think they could have a better chance at success this time (if well executed). But I don’t think moving two teams there is the way to do it. Plus, you know, it probably won’t be well executed.
This is part of the NFL that I hate. You’ve got Goodell telling the cities of St. Louis, Oakland, and San Diego that their attempts to keep their teams are “unsatisfactory and inadequate.” and that they did not put forth feasible stadium plans. He concluded that these cities had “ample opportunity but did not develop their proposals sufficiently to ensure the retention of its NFL team.” http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/25444086/report-goodell-calls-proposals-in-oakland-san-diego-st-louis-unsatisfactory
That arrogance is breathtaking.
For example, St. Louis is, of course, another Midwestern city with the usual financial struggles. But they’re still willing to spend more money than they should to keep the Rams. Alas, that just isn’t good enough for Goodell Almighty. He wants his moneyed gentry to be able to visit a stadium that has the amount of luxury that they deserve, and damned Joe and Jane taxpayer just aren’t coming through for him.
That is sickening.
(BTW, Kyle, where did you watch that last Browns game before the move? It was blacked out in the Cleveland market.)
it is only my opinion that LA can’t even support one team , let alone two.
i think Iowa would support a team better than L.A. …
good post … i don’t know about Kyle , but i was at the last game against Cincy.
My man! I think you are right… They love the Hawkeyes, and I think they would support the NFL. Why not try a team in a city like Helena? Those in Montana watch football too, and they would show up for games as they have like zero professional teams, all they have is minor league baseball and college sports…
totally agree … but they are hell-bent on L.A.
And, the Green Bay Peckers prove that a team can be very successful in a small market. Jackson Mississippi could probably support a team, Lexington Kentucky, and why not Canada (Toronto) since Canadians like football so much they have their own league. Nebraskans would show up for the NFL like they do for their cornhuskers… I think New Mexico would better support the NFL…
The folk in LA can’t get to work, much less a football stadium… No one can get anywhere there…
Agreed, didn’t a league already fail? Just have some games in London. As per my comment below on Canadians and football, I am not saying I want to see a team in Toronto, I am just saying they (the NFL) would make more money in Toronto than LA…)
Living in the LA area, I can tell you that fans of all three teams are dying to get them here, my brother-in-law being one. On one hand I’m excited about having NFL games to attend, and like Kyle, possibly have a second team to have more than just indifference about. On the other hand, I do know the pain of loss, and that sucks for our neighbors down south or north, or east.
I just hope the cities don’t force the team(s) to adopt the city name like Anaheim did with the Angels. I don’t think I could root for the Carson Chargers, or the Raiders of the City of Industry.
Thanks. Yeah, I was there too. Section 2, upper deck. Great view of the goings-on in the bleachers.
The mopes in the front office actually had the gall to put a huge banner on the left field tarp that said, “Thanks, Art, for 35 Great Years.” That was Modell’s parting kick in the face.
If only there was a historical reference that would prove that point. I mean, let’s just say that the Raiders and the Rams both move to L.A. – the Los Angeles Raiders and the Los Angeles Rams, can you even imagine? This will serve as a valuable experiment, so if it doesn’t work out, we’ll know for the future.
Disagree with your premises. Of course there are some fans, but at its core, SD is not a football town or much of a sports town. Much like its weather, it’s lukewarm as to Padres and Chargers. In more ways than I care to put down, i’s nothing like the Browns situation. Not every in the same ballpark.
Also, generalizing LA as a big mess of sprawl is lazy. The location near LAX (not far from where I live) is a great location for this site (they are literally building public trans now to it, plenty of space in the old Hollywood Park racetrack, et). And it’s bigger than just getting a team here…it’s a southern California presence for the NFL offices, Super Bowl, Olympics bid, etc. The NFL wants a legitimate Jerry Jones like stadium in so Cal. The SD dump site doesn’t qualify.
Hard to be too sad for the city of St. Louis. They did, after all, take the Rams from LA in 1995, where they had a home for 50 years. Turnabout and whatever.
No clue I never paid attention to it.
Yeah, but it’s not the same because L.A. didn’t care when the Rams left.
Also, the Chargers started out in 1960 as the Los Angeles Chargers, and they left for San Diego in 1961. And of course, the Raiders were the Los Angeles Raiders from 1982 through 1994.
So L.A. has lost three NFL teams, and they didn’t care when any of them left.
Disagree with the logic that fairness of the move depends on whether the fan base “cares” enough. That’s dangerous. Were we as Browns fans not caring when we didn’t give Modell a new stadium? Did we not put up a good enough fight? Was it our fault? Of course not.
I also disagree with the idea that LA “didn’t care.” It’s a city of 4 million (ish). There are a ton of transplants here who have different teams to root for…hard to categorize the whole feeling of the city as not caring. There are a lot of people who remain Rams fans and Raider fans. After 20 years there is still a base (mostly Rams).
Okay, obviously I’m generalizing, but how can you not?
Still, I’m not sensing any great demand for an NFL presence among the good citizens of L.A. My sense is that the people who want football in L.A. the most are the owners and the league office because they think this will make them even richer than they already are. As for everybody else . . . whatevs.
I realize that you are much closer to this than I am, and I admit that my opinion isn’t based on much more than gut feeling. But I think I’m fairly right.
I hear ya…and I know the “LA doesn’t care” narrative is out there, but I think it’s kind of crappy and unfair. To be honest, I get the sense (having been here since 2000 and having visited before then) that in the first few years, the fan base was hopeful and excited they’d get a team back. Then, as time passed, LA was nothing more than a pawn or leverage in owners’ games to get a new stadium or other perks from their cities. The people here grew more jaded and leery that any return would ever happen after getting hopes up and let down year after year. Even today, when it would SEEM very probable a return is actually going to happen, they still don’t trust it will materialize. After all of the let downs and all of the political and financial hurdles, you can understand why. But, I do think there are real Ram fans still here, and the city will embrace the return and eventually new fans will come. As for the Chargers, meh. I think they sadly will be a tag along (which does suck for the actual Charger fans in SD).
my biggest memory of that day was watching the deconstruction of the stadium DURING the game & being amazed at how many people brought tools to the game … i remember watching people carrying out partial rows of the fold-down seats held together by cast iron … eerily quiet & somber during that deconstruction.
many lost sight of the fact that the browns won that game.
hi ERIC … then for people like you , i am happy.
Haa haa, yeah try bringing a hacksaw, screwdriver, crowbar, or bolt cutters into the stadium today!
I got a few souvenirs. Somebody busted up some of those yellow seats in our section, so I grabbed a few slats. I was afraid I might get arrested for looting or something, so I hid them inside my jacket. Then I get down to the lower concourse and see people carrying out four seats at a time. Guess I didn’t have to worry about that.
I seem to think that halfway through the fourth quarter, teams had to switch sides whenever they crossed midfield because they didn’t want the game being played at the Dawg Pound end because of all the stuff that was being thrown on the field. Do you recall that?
i do recall that … now i’m glad i was there that day.
hehe. Could you imagine if the Raiders had stayed? Al Davis would have owned that town, which is pretty dang funny considering his standard wardrobe.
A Toronto team removes half the Browns fan base.
So while I agree with everything you say let’s just be clear that this is not Goodell pushing this…it’s the owners.
Just replace all the places you say “Goodell” with “32 NFL Owners” and I’ll uptick…go ahead, I’ll wait. đ
Says everything about the owner. Team is live updating about leaving San Diego to it’s fans. Yaaayyyy…
Stay classy Chargers
https://twitter.com/Chargers/status/686985939105677312
I was in Canton. I guess it’s possible I didn’t see it live. The news sticks out more than the game itself. Again, I couldn’t tell you a single play, but I retold it as I remembered it.
NFL is huge here in London and this city would support it no problemo. Not only draw from the London base, but all over the UK. Most of the population is less than a three hour train ride, and the trains here are actually a main form of transportation, unlike the US. Plus, the current games draw a decent tourist crowd from the US.
The quality of television coverage has improved immensely over the last four years. We’re talking High School baseball to AAA pro ball. In fact, some of their technical play breakdown coverage is better than any I have seen on any channel in the US, including the lame ESPN matchup.
It is coming to London, you can bank it.
https://twitter.com/TheRealLA__/status/686990858789457920
It’s all about the money………
Scheduling/travel nightmare besides you already have football!
The Rams’ owner also trashed the city of St. Louis last week for their proposal to keep the team. I suppose he hopes that this will make the fans glad they’re leaving. Greedy scumbag.
It seems the only thing the league did right in returning a franchise to Cleveland was not ripping an existing team out of another city. The NFL awarded expansion franchises to Carolina and Jacksonville (because Florida needs 3 football teams) in 1995, while ignoring Baltimore, whose team tip-toed out to Indy in 83. I recall there being rumours of Tampa Bay relocating and returning a team to Cleveland to the elation of their Pavlovian fans. These are the same fans who welcomed Al Lerner, whose leerjet symbolically delivered the team from Cleveland to Baltimore, back as owner of the new Browns. Therein lies my issue with the NFL and the Browns… Fans lose, Zealots pay, and billionaires take their balls and play wherever they want with them.
In fairness, getting the Jags out of Jacksonville would probably be good for the Jags.
When will the country (Cleveland included) realize that the NFL moves franchises to steal money from tax payers?
it gets uglier. Modell helped block the expansion team to Baltimore, then ponied up with city officials to move the Browns there.
Touche. I neglected to mention that, and the conspiracy goes even deeper. I managed an Advantix ticket broker outlet in the mid-nineties and although i don’t have any hard data to support it, I know that available seats were intentionally blocked from purchase to encourage TV blackouts and give the false perception of fan apathy to fuel the move.
His name IS L.A. spelled backward after all.
Send them to LA, then.
i definitely find Chargers fans “cute.”
The entire NY metro area is over 20 million people. I think 2 teams is ok here.
i watched it from Atlanta. I still have the VHS tapes of the coverage.
I’m sure the fans of the old Muncie Flyers, Decatur Staleys, and Rock Island Independents feel the same way!!
that would be kind of awesome if Spanos tweeted: “Stay Classy, San Diego” when he left. the definition of a punch in the nuts.