CHARGERS: The Chargers’ move to Los Angeles has stirred up a storm of controversy among fans.
By Brandon Byrne, Staff Writer
Since the departure of football teams, the Raiders and Rams, from Los Angeles in 1994, numerous teams have been rumored to relocate to Los Angeles over the decades. Up until last year, the plan was to move an NFL team back to L.A. The 2016 season was the first season of the Rams’ return to L. A. and fans welcomed the relocation as the start of a new era for the franchise. However, the now former San Diego Charger’s recent announcement of their move back to L.A. has not been met with the same enthusiasm.
The Chargers have a long history with the city of San Diego that dates back to 1961. The Chargers have been playing in their current home stadium, Qualcomm Stadium, for 50 years. There are generations of people in San Diego that grew up with the Chargers, and the fans have always been loyal to the franchise. Although the Chargers owner, Dean Spanos, did not originally desire to move in 2016, he eventually decided to relocate the franchise because he wanted more taxpayer support in the construction of a new stadium. He wanted the city of San Diego to build a new stadium, but the bill that San Diego citizens voted on to fund the new stadium failed to pass. At that point, Spanos had to make a decision of where to relocate the Chargers.
San Diego citizens are profoundly disappointed in the relocation because it accurately exudes Spanos’ disregard for the fans and the relationship established between the Chargers and the city of San Diego. This disappointment and frustration is prominently displayed in the fact that the Chargers cannot get a single company from San Diego to help relocate. Moving all of the Chargers’ equipment to L.A. will cost 100,000 dollars, yet every moving company in San Diego, over 22 in total, has refused to help the Chargers. “[The Moving Companies] were making this last statement of loyalty to the SAN DIEGO Chargers,” Ryan Charles, head of marketing at www.HireaHelper.com, said about the decision.
Not only are fans upset with the move to L.A., but so are owners of other teams and the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. The League gave its best effort to maintain a presence in San Diego, but Spanos was intent on moving to L.A. To keep the Chargers in San Diego the League offered an additional $100 million dollars to the usual $200 million to help finance a new stadium in San Diego. The Rams owner, Stan Kroenke, attempted to keep L.A. a one team city by “writing a large check (possibly over a series of years) to help the Chargers build a stadium in San Diego,” a player from sports website Pro Football Talk said. When asked about the relocation, Goodell said he was “disappointed.”
On top of this, the Chargers administration rubbed salt in the wound by releasing a lackluster logo for the L. A. Chargers. Almost instantly after the logo was released, it became a media sensation. The logo was a copy of the L.A. Dodgers’ logo. The logo is nothing more than just L.A and a zig zag on the end of the L. The new logo was met with such overwhelming opposition that the Chargers administration released a new logo later that day to try to remedy the situation, but it was the same logo just with the original light blue and yellow colors. Ultimately the Chargers administration had no choice but to kill because of how much heat they were getting for it. However, Spanos claims that it was only “meant to help launch our brand into the market.” Whether or not that logo was made to be permanent, it perfectly exemplifies Charger fans’ disapproval of the move to L.A.