Los Angeles NFL Brands Discussion

[colortv]

One thing I realized, that after all these years with teams coming and going, relocation talk for decades, LA ended up with its original NFL and AFL teams.

[colortv]

 

The powder blues...

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

9 hours ago, San Diego said:

Can we just move the San Diego Chargers back to San Diego now?

 

They'll be back eventually.

[colortv]

11 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

They'll be back eventually.

 

They won't, for the same reasons the Clippers never went back..and the Clippers never paid a $650 million relocation fee.

[The_Admiral]

11 hours ago, Gothamite said:

Until that point, the posts themselves were part of the strategy on goal-and-inches plays.  Offensive players would use them almost like another set of blockers.

 

No wonder people don't take pre-Super-Bowl NFL seriously. "Hands off to the fullback, slips the tackle, here comes the linebacker, ope, no, he ran headfirst into a steel pole, touchdown Chicago Cardinals!"

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

37 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

9 hours ago, San Diego said:

Can we just move the San Diego Chargers back to San Diego now?

 

They'll be back eventually.

 

28 minutes ago, colortv said:

They won't, for the same reasons the Clippers never went back.

 

The Clippers have plenty of fans in L.A. and draw very well. They are far behind the Lakers in terms of prestige; but they have better support than most NBA teams, having outdrawn the Lakers for five straight years until last season.

 

By contrast, the Chargers have very few fans in L.A., and draw extremely poorly. Opposing fans dominate the crowd in every home game. These things will not change. Once Spanos is gone (either through his selling the team or through his shuffling off this mortal coil), the NFL will correct his mistake and will arrange for the Chargers to leave Los Angeles where they are ignored, and to go back to San Diego where they will be embraced.

 

The Clippers are the second team in L.A. That's just fine. But the Chargers are the third team in L.A., behind the Rams and the Raiders. (The Raiders' move to Las Vegas will only strengthen them in L.A.) The Chargers have no future in L.A.; and the league won't put up with such abject floundering.

[colortv]

37 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

The Clippers have plenty of fans in L.A. and draw very well. They are far behind the Lakers in terms of prestige; but they have better support than most NBA teams, having outdrawn the Lakers for five straight years until last season.

 

By contrast, the Chargers have very few fans in L.A., and draw extremely poorly. Opposing fans dominate the crowd in every home game. These things will not change. Once Spanos is gone (either through his selling the team or through his shuffling off this mortal coil), the NFL will correct his mistake and will arrange for the Chargers to leave Los Angeles where they are ignored, and to go back to San Diego where they will be embraced.

 

The Clippers are the second team in L.A. That's just fine. But the Chargers are the third team in L.A., behind the Rams and the Raiders. (The Raiders' move to Las Vegas will only strengthen them in L.A.) The Chargers have no future in L.A.; and the league won't put up with such abject floundering.

 

Yes, the NFL in its obsession with money and popularity is going let the Chargers move back to San Diego, reducing the Chargers potential fanbase from 20 million people to 3 million(roughly speaking) where a publicly funded stadium will never happen.

 

The Chargers will never be able to build a fanbase? Tell that to the Clippers who for 30 years were the biggest joke in sports run by the worst ownership ever.

 

There's a reason the Jets, Mets, White Sox etc. have never left despite being the secondary teams.

 

The league and owners(who control the league) will never "force" a team to leave a larger market for a smaller market for the dangerous precedent it would set...for themselves. 

 

You're ignoring the social, political, and most importantly economic facts of the situation.

 

That's just not the way the real world works, especially not with the NFL in the 21st century.

[Ferdinand Cesarano]

Well, one of us certainly is ignoring the social, political, and especially the economic facts. The higher population of Los Angeles means nothing if the Chargers are nonentities there. This team drew 65,000 a game in San Diego; it won't get half that in the new Inglewood stadium.

 

The Chargers playing in Los Angeles costs every owner in the league money, and will continue to do so until these other owners say "enough". That point will certainly come after Spanos moves on; but it might well come even sooner. Once the new stadium opens, the Chargers' situation in L.A. is going to go rapidly from merely embarrassing to completely untenable.

[colortv]

double post.

[colortv]

10 minutes ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

Well, one of us certainly is ignoring the social, political, and especially the economic facts. The higher population of Los Angeles means nothing if the Chargers are nonentities there. This team drew 65,000 a game in San Diego; it won't get half that in the new Inglewood stadium.

 

The Chargers playing in Los Angeles costs every owner in the league money, and will continue to do so until these other owners say "enough". That point will certainly come after Spanos moves on; but it might well come even sooner. Once the new stadium opens, the Chargers' situation in L.A. is going to go rapidly from merely embarrassing to completely untenable.

 

In an area with 20 million people, that supports 2 pro basketball teams, 3 baseball teams, 2 hockey teams, 2 soccer teams, which was able to support THREE NFL teams 30 years ago(before 2 terrible owners forced their way out of the area), in addition to countless minor and secondary teams, the Chargers won't be able to carve out a fanbase(Counting what they will retain from San Diego) and fill a stadium 8 times a year, got it.

 

No team is going to make more money being a San Diego team than it will an LA team, it's like saying water isn't wet.

 

I mean, that's the whole reason the Chargers moved in the first place..

[IceCap]

21 minutes ago, colortv said:

I mean, that's the whole reason the Chargers moved in the first place..

No, they moved because Dean is an entitled pissant who refused to negotiate with the city of San Diego in good faith.

 

Maybe moving out of the joke that is the Stub Hub Centre will do them some good, and make them less of a laughing stock in LA. I'm a fan of the team and not the locale, so I would obviously like to see them succeed wherever they are.

[leopard88]

9 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

No wonder people don't take pre-Super-Bowl NFL seriously. "Hands off to the fullback, slips the tackle, here comes the linebacker, ope, no, he ran headfirst into a steel pole, touchdown Chicago Cardinals!"

 

Does this also apply to the first seven years of the Super Bowl era?  The goalposts were still in play through 1973.

[Eszcz21]

8 hours ago, Ferdinand Cesarano said:

 

 

The Clippers have plenty of fans in L.A. and draw very well. They are far behind the Lakers in terms of prestige; but they have better support than most NBA teams, having outdrawn the Lakers for five straight years until last season.

 

By contrast, the Chargers have very few fans in L.A., and draw extremely poorly. Opposing fans dominate the crowd in every home game. These things will not change. Once Spanos is gone (either through his selling the team or through his shuffling off this mortal coil), the NFL will correct his mistake and will arrange for the Chargers to leave Los Angeles where they are ignored, and to go back to San Diego where they will be embraced.

 

The Clippers are the second team in L.A. That's just fine. But the Chargers are the third team in L.A., behind the Rams and the Raiders. (The Raiders' move to Las Vegas will only strengthen them in L.A.) The Chargers have no future in L.A.; and the league won't put up with such abject floundering.

Trying to compare the 2 situations is ridiculous. The Clippers have been in LA for 34 years and just went through their most successful period in team history while the Lakers have been going through their lowest point in team history. The Chargers are in their second season in LA, of course they haven't had a chance to build a fan base. I want the Chargers back in SD just as much as any football fan but winning and time will change everything for them in LA.

[TBGKon]

11 hours ago, colortv said:

Chargers will be bigger in LA than they ever were in SD, and once SD fans get over it they will be able to drive the whole two hours to watch the team if they want.

 

Heck, recent reports indicated than when the Raiders considering getting out of Oakland a year early because of stadium drama Rams and Chargers were blocking SD as an option for the interim year because they consider it their territory.

....or its not really their territory and they just need a stadium to play in that close to Oakland...

[LMU]

Once again, let's stop pretending that the Raider fans in LA are spending their disposable income on anything more than a twelve pack of Bud Light every Sunday.  A grand majority are tapped out after the 7-Eleven run.

[kimball]

Honestly, the way I see the Chargers EVER moving back to San Diego is if the NFL and Rams agree that a second team doesn't move into the LA market if they left. I think the biggest reason why the Chargers jumped into the market is because they knew if the Raiders did that'd cut into their profits they enjoyed from a large team-less market for 20 years.

 

I don't know if the Chargers really believed that San Diego fans would follow them to LA or if they really cared believing that there were enough people in the LA market to create a solid fan base?

 

With the "success" they've had at StubHub, I can't wait to see what the stadium looks like on game day when they finally move into the Inglewood Stadium. A couple seasons of dismal attendance or lack of support could potentially force their hand to move back. Hopefully with new ownership. 

[LMU]

3 hours ago, kimball said:

Honestly, the way I see the Chargers EVER moving back to San Diego is if the NFL and Rams agree that a second team doesn't move into the LA market if they left. I think the biggest reason why the Chargers jumped into the market is because they knew if the Raiders did that'd cut into their profits they enjoyed from a large team-less market for 20 years.

 

I don't know if the Chargers really believed that San Diego fans would follow them to LA or if they really cared believing that there were enough people in the LA market to create a solid fan base?

 

With the "success" they've had at StubHub, I can't wait to see what the stadium looks like on game day when they finally move into the Inglewood Stadium. A couple seasons of dismal attendance or lack of support could potentially force their hand to move back. Hopefully with new ownership. 

There's a few problems with that theory.

 

1. The Rams move was contingent on a second team shacking up with them (which, ironically, was the requirement that led to Davis torpedoing the original Hollywood Park stadium proposal and moving back to Oakland).

2. If the Chargers were really that worried about the Raiders it seems odd that they originally partnered with the Raiders on the Carson stadium.  Even with a conference shift they'd be even more of an afterthought in their own stadium than they'll be in Inglewood.

3. An issue that gets overlooked is that the Chargers are applying their $200 million NFL stadium funding to the project so it's unlikely at this point if they'll suddenly pull their funding mid-project and move back unless something truly drastic happens.

[kimball]

1 hour ago, LMU said:

There's a few problems with that theory.

 

1. The Rams move was contingent on a second team shacking up with them (which, ironically, was the requirement that led to Davis torpedoing the original Hollywood Park stadium proposal and moving back to Oakland).

2. If the Chargers were really that worried about the Raiders it seems odd that they originally partnered with the Raiders on the Carson stadium.  Even with a conference shift they'd be even more of an afterthought in their own stadium than they'll be in Inglewood.

3. An issue that gets overlooked is that the Chargers are applying their $200 million NFL stadium funding to the project so it's unlikely at this point if they'll suddenly pull their funding mid-project and move back unless something truly drastic happens.

 

1) Was it? I thought Kroenke's wallets were pretty deep? Or are you saying that was the requirement of the NFL?

2) Yeah, I see your argument there. And, they totally would. Which makes me wonder how off they were on projections on this move. 

3) Agreed. I do wonder though if the NFL would refund or negotiate a lower relocation fee if they did want to return?

 

Either way, this is a disaster and will be for years. 

[colortv]

Ok, the thinking being applied in here is way too simplistic and short-sighted.

 

I don't know why we're talking about the Chargers moving back within the next few years much less in the long-term.

.

If memory serves, the NFL stipulated that the teams moving to LA could not sell within 10 years.

 

The NFL/Spanos are not moving back to a smaller portion of the market where many of the fans/politicans hate ownership to play in a 50 year old stadium which they tried to replace for 20 years.

 

Between the relocation fee and the G-4 loan Spanos has almost almost a billion dollars invested in this move.

 

This is a decades long financial move by both the NFL and Spanos with billions of dollars invested in it.

 

Suggesting going back to San Diego is even a remote possibility is showing a complete detachment from logic and the reality of the situation.

[Gothamite]

15 hours ago, LMU said:

1. The Rams move was contingent on a second team shacking up with them

 

That’s largely because the NFL was trying to keep Kroenke from moving to LA.  Easy to forget how hard the league fought him on that, forcing him to stay an extra year and Goodell personally intervening to help St. Louis keep the Rams in town.

 

If they couldn’t stop Stan, then at least they could force him to share the wealth with an owner everybody liked but who didn’t have the juice to seal the deal himself. 

 

The NFL set that condition, they could lift it just as easily.

 

Now, I don’t think it will happen.  But there’s no rule against it happening that can’t be undone with a simple vote.