Los Angeles NFL Brands Discussion

[daveindc]

10 hours ago, Lights Out said:

 

Again, you're missing the point. There isn't a single Chargers fan who cares about how many miles away the team is right now or how long the travel time would be. It's disingenuous to pretend that this is a factor.

 

Chargers fans have sworn off the team for a number of reasons: the stadium-related dog-and-pony show put on by a family that never had any actual interest in staying in San Diego, the team being moved to a rival city, and the team being moved to a city that doesn't even want them due to pure greed. Splitting hairs about how far up the road they're moving is beyond irrelevant to the emotions of the actual spurned fans of the team.

 

 

Here's the catch, though. They can change the jerseys, but what they can't change is the two words in front of their name that are noxious to any San Diego Chargers fan: "Los Angeles."

 

I get that we like to place a lot of importance on the aesthetics of sports on this board, and for good reason. But I think sometimes we get so caught up in the visual brand of a team that we lose sight of the bigger picture, and this is one of those cases.

 

The Chargers were a San Diego staple for 55 years. San Diegans spent decades cheering for one of the most inept franchises in sports, hoping that something magical would happen and the Chargers would become winners. They were rewarded for it once, in the pre-merger era and the franchise's third season of existence. Since then, it's been nothing but one disaster after another, and between the Chargers and Padres, San Diego has been mired in a longer championship drought than the one Cleveland had.

 

Now, any success that the Chargers have won't be the same. It'll just be more success for a city that's been spoiled by it for decades. If they ever somehow win a Super Bowl (not likely anytime soon under Spanos ownership), it won't count as the long-awaited title for San Diego. The parade will be down Figueroa, not through the streets of downtown SD. And the success will primarily benefit the family of greedy :censored:bags that betrayed San Diego. It's naive to think that something as minor in the grand scheme of things as the color that the team wears on their jerseys is important enough to cancel out all of that baggage. If anything, it will only make things worse after decades of pleas to bring back the powder blues full-time fell on deaf ears.

 

For the record, the radio team won't be the same. Former Chargers player Nick Hardwick was the color guy this year and he refused the offer to follow the team to LA. As for the beat writers, I'm not sure what the Union-Tribune is going to do now that the Chargers have moved.
 

 

Take it from someone who actually was a Chargers fan until a week ago. The San Diego fans who are sticking with the Chargers even despite the relocation do exist, but they are a tiny minority, and even most of them are only willing to be casual fans at best anymore. The vast majority of Chargers fans - including many out-of-town fans like me - are officially done with this team. And it will take something drastic like an ownership change and maybe even a return to San Diego to win us back. Deano knows it, too, which is why he's done the bare minimum of damage control with his old fanbase and is reluctant to even acknowledge that we exist anymore.

 

 

San Diego Tribune writer and San Diego native Kevin Acee talks about this here starting at around 5:25:

 

"The majority sentiment would be that yes, change your name please."

 

"It's ignorant of people back east to say- Oh, it's only 100 miles up the road." 

 

"San Diego and L.A. are different countries, practically."

 

 

@bosrs1

[AAO]

The LA Breakers is my answer:

7 hours ago, AAO said:

A different direction from me...

 

https://www.behance.net/gallery/47660267/SD2LA-The-Los-Angeles-Breakers

 

 

[FiddySicks]

8 hours ago, LMU said:

Bingo. Out here we think nothing of driving 300 miles each way for a weekend trip.  Hell, I drove down and back to SD back in June the same day for a work thing. It's no big deal here especially on a weekend.

 

I STILL make day trips from (Nearly) Reno for Giants games. 

[KCScout76]

All this news of the Chargers and the Raiders moving . . .

 

[Sykotyk]

To put this in perspective to people:

 

Imagine if the Milwaukee Brewers became the Chicago Brewers. Or the Cleveland Browns became the Pittsburgh Browns. Or the Philadelphia Eagles became the Baltimore Eagles?

 

Would anyone think 'Oh, you should still follow them, they're just two hours away'.

[MrAstrodome]

Same feeling when our original team moved to Tennesee and kept the old named. They were dead to me, Mom and my brother. Dad's loyalties, however stayed with them after the move and the rebranding. As said I before, Super Bowl in 2000, I was giddy over the Titans losing to the Rams. They are many people that are pissed that there's a hall of fame for the Titans that feature names that never played for the that city. Hell, Earl Campbell refused to go to his induction and pretty much became to the Texans what Johnny Unitas has become to the Ravens. I guess @Lights Out will feel the same if the Chargers somehow make it to the Super Bowl. 

 

I hope y'all get your ownership change and move back home because this and the logo deal is a load of BS. 

[Sykotyk]

2 hours ago, Ashes of Astroworld said:

Same feeling when our original team moved to Tennesee and kept the old named. They were dead to me, Mom and my brother. Dad's loyalties, however stayed with them after the move and the rebranding. As said I before, Super Bowl in 2000, I was giddy over the Titans losing to the Rams. They are many people that are pissed that there's a hall of fame for the Titans that feature names that never played for the that city. Hell, Earl Campbell refused to go to his induction and pretty much became to the Texans what Johnny Unitas has become to the Ravens. I guess @Lights Out will feel the same if the Chargers somehow make it to the Super Bowl. 

 

I hope y'all get your ownership change and move back home because this and the logo deal is a load of BS. 

I know what it's like watching the Ravens win a Super Bowl. First one. When Modell was there. Their game against San Fran was different. It didn't have the same impact, but it still wasn't the outcome I'd have liked. But, their win in 2001 felt like a horrible kick to the gut.

[colortv]

One thing to keep in mind, and it's as much about perception as the distance thing.

 

LA and San Diego are part of the same state. It's not quite akin to Philly and NY.

 

Also there really isn't much of a "rivalry" between the cities. Not sure where that is coming from.

 

The 5 between SD and OC/LA is a parking lot on the weekends both ways.

 

I have no doubt both the Rams and Chargers will try to build their market from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

[Ray Lankford]

17 hours ago, Lights Out said:

 

All I can say is, if you actually believe this, you are wildly out-of-touch. Chargers fans in San Diego never wanted navy to begin with; it was forced on the franchise by the Spanos family. For decades, fans begged for the full-time return of the powder blues and it always fell on deaf ears. As the team finally started begrudgingly introducing throwbacks and then a powder blue alternate, crowds at the Murph became more and more powder-blue-heavy. And still, the Spanoses didn't get the message. Bringing back the powder blues now would be another middle finger to everyone who supported the Chargers in San Diego. It would have the opposite effect of what you're describing.

Just to add on to this, while there are a lot of Padres fans/San Diegans who love brown and want the team to bring it back, there are still people who actually hate it. It's probably some combination of lingering sentiment from when it was dumped and brown having unfortunate connotations but either way, it's divisive. Powder blue isn't. No one hates powder blue but a lot of people love it. Bringing back powder blue would've been a slam dunk for Spanos, and that's a guy who's needed a slam dunk for a while. But he never did, because he didn't care and that sums up Dean Spanos in general. 

[BBTV]

8 hours ago, colortv said:

One thing to keep in mind, and it's as much about perception as the distance thing.

 

LA and San Diego are part of the same state. It's not quite akin to Philly and NY.

 

Also there really isn't much of a "rivalry" between the cities. Not sure where that is coming from.

 

The 5 between SD and OC/LA is a parking lot on the weekends both ways.

 

I have no doubt both the Rams and Chargers will try to build their market from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

 

State lines mean nothing in 2017.  Philadelphia has way more in common with DC, NYC, and NJ than it does with the overwhelming majority of PA.  The example given was Trenton.  I don't think that would be a huge deal, other than it's not accessible via simple subway or short bus rides.  Many people in the city proper don't drive and the trains to Trenton kinda suck.  PHL to NY would be a big deal, because they're totally different cities that believe it or not are actually starting to compete with each other for jobs/companies and residents (there's a growing number of people who live in one but work in the other now.)  Do SD and LA "compete" with each other?  I get that they're separate media markets, but are tehy really that different?  I think the difference in distance perception is definitely a real thing, since so many in the east rely on public transportation for everything and congestion / density is so much more that driving from major city to major city just isn't very feasible.

 

Lines that were drawn hundreds of years ago simply don't work now - the election proved that, as do politics in general.  The fact that some bumpkin in western PA has any say as to how a major city is governed is a joke.

 

It's time to scrap the notion of "states" and re-draw the administrative districts.  This will be my main talking point when I run in 2020, using the slogan "Make America Great (for the first time)"

 

 

[Sport]

12 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

To put this in perspective to people:

 

Imagine if the Milwaukee Brewers became the Chicago Brewers. Or the Cleveland Browns became the Pittsburgh Browns. Or the Philadelphia Eagles became the Baltimore Eagles?

 

Would anyone think 'Oh, you should still follow them, they're just two hours away'.

I've never been to San Diego. Only been to LA a couple times so I wasn't well informed on their differences or their actual distance. A couple years back when this was floated as a possibility I thought "well that's really not that big of a deal since they're similar cities in southern California and they're relatively close", but the more I heard from San Diegans (San Diegoans, San Diegohns) the more I got it and didn't want the team to move. Now I'm oddly more upset about the Chargers moving than I am the Raiders moving to Las Vegas. I can't explain that.

 

It'd be like if the Cincinnati Bengals moved to Louisville or Columbus. I'm from Columbus, I don't have anything against Louisville, but it wouldn't be the same. I'd probably stop watching the NFL altogether. 

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

13 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

To put this in perspective to people:

 

Imagine if the Milwaukee Brewers became the Chicago Brewers. Or the Cleveland Browns became the Pittsburgh Browns. Or the Philadelphia Eagles became the Baltimore Eagles?

 

Would anyone think 'Oh, you should still follow them, they're just two hours away'.

 

Milwaukee is definitely within Chicago's sphere of influence.  Let's remember that, in the late 1960s, when Bud Selig was trying to get an expansion team for Milwaukee, he convinced the White Sox to play several home games a year in Milwaukee.  The White Sox wouldn't have done that if they didn't already consider Milwaukee to be part of their extended region.  

If Milwaukee didn't have teams of their own in the major sports leagues, the Chicago teams would surely be that city's "home" teams, just as the New York teams have fanbases that stretch hundreds of miles north through Upstate New York.  So, on that one, I'd say "yes" for sure.



 

[BJ Sands]

19 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Milwaukee is definitely within Chicago's sphere of influence.  Let's remember that, in the late 1960s, when Bud Selig was trying to get an expansion team for Milwaukee, he convinced the White Sox to play several home games a year in Milwaukee.  The White Sox wouldn't have done that if they didn't already consider Milwaukee to be part of their extended region.  

If Milwaukee didn't have teams of their own in the major sports leagues, the Chicago teams would surely be that city's "home" teams, just as the New York teams have fanbases that stretch hundreds of miles north through Upstate New York.  So, on that one, I'd say "yes" for sure.



 

The Sox in Milwaukee was a potential precursor to them moving to Milwaukee. They weren't there just because it was part of their extended region.

 

And Milwaukee is not in Chicago's sphere of influence. Some similarities, but few. 

[SFGiants58]

10 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

Milwaukee is definitely within Chicago's sphere of influence.  Let's remember that, in the late 1960s, when Bud Selig was trying to get an expansion team for Milwaukee, he convinced the White Sox to play several home games a year in Milwaukee.  The White Sox wouldn't have done that if they didn't already consider Milwaukee to be part of their extended region.  

If Milwaukee didn't have teams of their own in the major sports leagues, the Chicago teams would surely be that city's "home" teams, just as the New York teams have fanbases that stretch hundreds of miles north through Upstate New York.  So, on that one, I'd say "yes" for sure.

 

 

 

 

I'm guessing here, but I think the White Sox's series of games in Milwaukee is part of the reason why the 1969 expansions did not include Milwaukee (directly). There was the assumption that the White Sox would relocate there in a couple years' time. I'm not sure that Bud would've rechristened the team as the "Brewers," but part of me wishes that he did (so that we may avoid the whole "White Sox/Red Sox" point when talking about the Stars and the Wild).

 

The NL could focus on Montréal (a city that had long campaigned for a team) and San Diego (winners of the expansion bid, and former host to a prominent PCL team). Meanwhile, the AL had to expand to Kansas City by 1969 (Stuart Symington threatening the major's antitrust exemption) at the expense of the Seattle team (whose owners had planned for a 1970 rollout, not 1969). Milwaukee, because of the White Sox's series of games, wasn't a focal point for expansion. Frankly, it probably would've been better, in the long run, to skip over the one year of the Seattle Pilots and simply expand to Milwaukee in 1969.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

31 minutes ago, BJ Sands said:

The Sox in Milwaukee was a potential precursor to them moving to Milwaukee. They weren't there just because it was part of their extended region.

 

And Milwaukee is not in Chicago's sphere of influence. Some similarities, but few. 

 

If a group were trying to get an expansion team for Portland, Oregon, that group wouldn't be able to sign the White Sox to play there.  The White Sox played in Milwaukee because they knew they already had fans in Milwaukee and could reasonably expect to draw there.  And draw they did -- the attendance at Milwaukee was far greater on average than the team's attendance at Comiskey.

This also served Selig's purposes by demonstrating that there was still an audience for Major League Baseball in Milwaukee.

 

 

27 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

I'm guessing here, but I think the White Sox's series of games in Milwaukee is part of the reason why the 1969 expansions did not include Milwaukee (directly). There was the assumption that the White Sox would relocate there in a couple years' time. I'm not sure that Bud would've rechristened the team as the "Brewers," but part of me wishes that he did (so that we may avoid the whole "White Sox/Red Sox" point when talking about the Stars and the Wild).

 

The NL could focus on Montréal (a city that had long campaigned for a team) and San Diego (winners of the expansion bid, and former host to a prominent PCL team). Meanwhile, the AL had to expand to Kansas City by 1969 (Stuart Symington threatening the major's antitrust exemption) at the expense of the Seattle team (whose owners had planned for a 1970 rollout, not 1969). Milwaukee, because of the White Sox's series of games, wasn't a focal point for expansion. Frankly, it probably would've been better, in the long run, to skip over the one year of the Seattle Pilots and simply expand to Milwaukee in 1969.

 

The Sox' games in Milwaukee helped Milwaukee's case for expansion.  Selig has stated that he went into the announcement of the 1969 expansion cities with optimism, and even that, when he saw the Commissioner produce the "M" sound, he thought that the Commissioner was about to say the name "Milwaukee" (but, of course, the Commissioner said "Montreal").  When Milwaukee was not amongst the expansion cities named in 1969, Selig entertained ideas of buying the White Sox and moving them to Milwaukee; but he abandoned that plan upon understanding that the other American League owners would not have approved such a move.   The failure of the Seattle Pilots was a stroke of luck that just happened to fall into Selig's lap.

 

[Sec19Row53]

16 hours ago, Sykotyk said:

To put this in perspective to people:

 

Imagine if the Milwaukee Brewers became the Chicago Brewers. Or the Cleveland Browns became the Pittsburgh Browns. Or the Philadelphia Eagles became the Baltimore Eagles?

 

Would anyone think 'Oh, you should still follow them, they're just two hours away'.

See, I might actually still follow the Brewers, because I like players on the team and, even if they moved two hours away, it's all I'd have.  I have no allegiance to a random team located elsewhere (which is why I can't follow the NHL until playoff time).

 

It's possible that people who are following Rivers, Gates et al. until they retire might start liking other players, and end up still following the Chargers.

 

None of this means that the move doesn't totally suck if you are a San Diego Charger fan.

[BrianLion]

I think crossing state lines also plays a big role at least from a fan psyche perspective.

 

Sure San Diego and LA are 2 hours+ away drive, but you're still in the same state and region. Whereas Philly and Baltimore are almost equidistant to that yet they're two states apart.

 

Cleveland to Columbus might be a better comparison because A) you're still in state, and B ) you arent moving to a "rivals" city.

[Sec19Row53]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

If a group were trying to get an expansion team for Portland, Oregon, that group wouldn't be able to sign the White Sox to play there.  The White Sox played in Milwaukee because they knew they already had fans in Milwaukee and could reasonably expect to draw there.  And draw they did -- the attendance at Milwaukee was far greater on average than the team's attendance at Comiskey.

This also served Selig's purposes by demonstrating that there was still an audience for Major League Baseball in Milwaukee.

 

 

 

The Sox' games in Milwaukee helped Milwaukee's case for expansion.  Selig has stated that he went into the announcement of the 1969 expansion cities with optimism, and even that, when he saw the Commissioner produce the "M" sound, he thought that the Commissioner was about to say the name "Milwaukee" (but, of course, the Commissioner said "Montreal").  When Milwaukee was not amongst the expansion cities named in 1969, Selig entertained ideas of buying the White Sox and moving them to Milwaukee; but he abandoned that plan upon understanding that the other American League owners would not have approved such a move.   The failure of the Seattle Pilots was a stroke of luck that just happened to fall into Selig's lap.

 

Nope - there were baseball fans in Milwaukee, not White Sox fans in Milwaukee.  Fans recognized that by supporting a team, ANY team, it would better serve for Milwaukee getting another MLB team in the future.

[Gothamite]

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

If a group were trying to get an expansion team for Portland, Oregon, that group wouldn't be able to sign the White Sox to play there.  The White Sox played in Milwaukee because they knew they already had fans in Milwaukee and could reasonably expect to draw there.  And draw they did -- the attendance at Milwaukee was far greater on average than the team's attendance at Comiskey.

 

If anything, the baseball fans in Milwaukee had been following the Cubs.  Maybe because the city strongly identified as a National League town even after the Braves left, maybe because Wrigley Field was closer, or maybe because the Cubs and old Brewers had links going back to the 1930s and strengthened by Bill Veeck and Charlie Grimm.

 

But in reality, they were just baseball fans.  Fans who wanted a Major League team back in town.

 

2 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

The Sox' games in Milwaukee helped Milwaukee's case for expansion.  Selig has stated that he went into the announcement of the 1969 expansion cities with optimism, and even that, when he saw the Commissioner produce the "M" sound, he thought that the Commissioner was about to say the name "Milwaukee" (but, of course, the Commissioner said "Montreal").  When Milwaukee was not amongst the expansion cities named in 1969, Selig entertained ideas of buying the White Sox and moving them to Milwaukee; but he abandoned that plan upon understanding that the other American League owners would not have approved such a move.

 

The American League would not have approved the move precisely because Chicago and Milwaukee are not the same market.

[bosrs1]

14 hours ago, colortv said:

One thing to keep in mind, and it's as much about perception as the distance thing.

 

LA and San Diego are part of the same state. It's not quite akin to Philly and NY.

 

Also there really isn't much of a "rivalry" between the cities. Not sure where that is coming from.

 

The 5 between SD and OC/LA is a parking lot on the weekends both ways.

 

I have no doubt both the Rams and Chargers will try to build their market from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

 

Have you ever been to San Diego? Because as a San Diegan I would absolutely disagree with that statement. It may be a one sided rivalry, but there is definitely a rivalry between the two. Both in sports and otherwise.

 

As for San Diego and LA being in the same state, they are that's true. But California is effectively 5 (or more depending on who you talk to) different states rolled into one. LA is in one of those "sub states", San Diego is in another. It's the same reason San Francisco and LA are never lumped in together just because they're both in the same state. Or Sacramento and San Francisco.