On Thursday night, the San Diego Chargers took the field against the Denver Broncos wearing a uniform that paid tribute to one of the greatest eras in the franchise’s history. From 1974 to 1984 in their royal blue uniforms, the Chargers and their explosive offense revolutionized the way football was played through the air.
Under head coach Don Coryell and led by quarterback Dan Fouts, San Diego made the playoffs four seasons in a row from 1979 to 1982. In two of those seasons, the Chargers came up one game short of making it all the way to the Super Bowl.
In the seven years that Coryell coached in San Diego, the team’s offense averaged at least 25 points per game during five of those seasons. To put that in perspective, after Coryell was fired midway through the 1986 season, the Chargers’ offense did not average at least 25 points per game again until 2004.
The current San Diego team has displayed its own form of explosiveness on offense this season (averaging 28.8 points per game), but it has not led to success on the field. The Chargers are now 2-4 and are likely on their way to missing the playoffs for the sixth time in the last seven years.
Despite their lack of recent success, the franchise’s ownership still has the cajones to ask their city for a new stadium.
On November 8th, residents of San Diego will have the opportunity to vote on if the struggling franchise will be able to build a brand new, billion dollar stadium. While the facility would be a great opportunity for this thriving city to grow even more, why should the people of San Diego award a team that nearly left them in the dust less than a year ago?
Just over 280 days ago, the Chargers and their ownership applied for relocation to Los Angeles, California. The team ended up staying put in San Diego for 2016, but they still have the option to move to Los Angeles in 2017 if ownership does not get their way with the approval of a new stadium.
The Chargers are like that husband that cheats on his wife, tries to live with his mistress, but when things do not work out he goes back to his wife to try and make things better again. Sorry, but it is just not that easy.
The team’s ownership cannot even take care of the facilities they currently inhabit at Qualcomm Stadium, so why would anyone think that things would change with a new stadium? Renovations are now out of the question due to the amount of repairs that have piled up and been ignored over the years.
Maybe if some actual effort was shown to improve their current home in the past 15 years, San Diego’s residents would be more open to supporting the Chargers getting a new stadium. But the mentality that has lead to the team’s struggles on the field has seemed to have originated from the so-called “leaders” that run the franchise.
The people of San Diego should be fine if the Chargers decide to leave town after this season. An expansion team or another franchise would likely relocate to San Diego at some point in the future because the city is just too large (1.3 million people) to not have a professional football team.
Maybe by then, San Diego will get a franchise run by owners that actually care less about stuffing their pockets full of money and more about the product that is put out onto the field.
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