Say what you will about the San Diego Chargers’ desire for a new football stadium, but the way that the team is going about getting that stadium is downright disgusting.
On March 4, Chargers President Dean Spanos sent a letter to the San Diego City Council announcing the team’s enactment of a trigger clause that would allow the team to negotiate with other cities. While Spanos announced that the activation of the clause is part of an agreed-upon process of negotiation through a full-page ad in the March 5 San Diego Union-Tribune, the timing of the activation says otherwise.
The announcement came just two days before a city council-appointed task force on a new football stadium in San Diego was to present its findings to the council. Though the task force’s report has not been made public, it is believed that it was going to recommend that the Chargers pay 100 percent of the construction costs for any new stadium that would be built. The Chargers had previously proposed splitting the costs with the city, and the timing of the clause’s activation speaks volumes toward the team’s intentions. Instead of waiting for the task force’s report, the team tried to take the spotlight with a very public threat of a move, to downplay the weight of the task force’s findings and convince San Diegans that they should empty their pockets before the team leaves town.
San Diego has long been threatened that if it doesn’t fork over a new stadium, the Chargers will pack up shop and move to Los Angeles. Though many thought — or feebly hoped — that it was only an idle threat, that threat became startlingly closer to reality with the activation of the trigger clause.
The 1995 lease that the Chargers signed with San Diego for Qualcomm Stadium stipulated that the team could reopen negotiations once every four years. By doing the math, one would see that we are in a negotiation-eligible year. The clause gives the city three months of exclusivity to negotiate a new lease with the Chargers. However, during that time, the Chargers are free to talk to other cities, but negotiations are not allowed. Should no lease be signed by that time, the team then has six months to negotiate with other cities. Should another city make the Chargers an offer (can you say “”Los Angeles””?), San Diego then has 90 days to match the deal.
Though in his ad, Spanos promised that he is committed to San Diego and would not speak to other cities, he did not include such a guarantee in the formal notice to the city of San Diego that the trigger clause was being activated. Basically, Spanos wanted to try to put a good public spin on the clause by attempting to reassure fans of the team’s loyalty to the city, while at the same time keeping his options open.
Spanos’ handling of the entire stadium situation has been less than honorable. With the NFL under a lot of pressure to fill the nation’s largest market (Los Angeles), the team moved its training camp from the friendly confines of UCSD to a facility in Los Angeles. Many took this as a public threat that the team would move north for good — and rightly so. Spanos has been jealous ever since the Padres got a beautiful new stadium in downtown San Diego. He claims that the more-than-30-year-old Qualcomm Stadium is vastly outdated and not up to the team’s standards. Nevermind that the stadium has hosted two recent Super Bowls and was substantially overhauled and improved within the last 10 years.
The next step came at this year’s Super Bowl when NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced that San Diego would not get another Super Bowl unless it built a new stadium. This prompted announcer John Madden to publicly question Tagliabue’s sanity during the Super Bowl broadcast.
Granted, the current stadium in Murphy Canyon needs some updates. It could definitely do with a facelift, especially after the Padres leave and the stadium is relegated to a purely football venue. However, since the stadium has hosted two Super Bowls since 1998, it is clearly not the outdated monstrosity that Spanos and Tagliabue would like people to believe. It is still a fully functional stadium that many regard as one of the best in the league.
Even if one were inclined to agree that the Chargers need a new stadium, this is not the way to go about getting one. The honorable and decent thing for Spanos to do would have been to can the threats, wait for the task force’s proposal and then work with the city on the possibility of a new stadium. Making public threats and undermining important reports with ill-timed activation of clauses only alienates fans and makes the team lose credibility with the community.
In an era when professional sports is getting an increasingly bad name, it is a shame to see a professional franchise act in such an irresponsible manner. Were Spanos as dedicated to the city as he claimed to be in his advertisement, he would have included in his letter to the city the guarantee that the team would not talk to any other city. He would not leave the door open for more threats when the city refused to pay for the stadium.
Hopefully the situation can be worked out with little incident. Hopefully, the Chargers will negotiate a quick deal to stay in San Diego for a very long time. Hopefully.
