A Memo to the Mayor and the County Commissioners.

It’s time to think of alternative plans for the future of San Diego sports. The drive to build a new Stadium for the Chargers has stalled, because the owner has set his sights on making millions and billions of dollars in the Los Angeles market.

Every word uttered by Dean Spanos’ mouthpiece Mark Fabiani, has a negative attached to it. Spanos’ heart, soul, mind and checkbook is about Los Angeles and additional wealth.

The alternative ideal, is for San Diego to move on to the next team available. The Raiders. They’d become a Southern California team, more of a regional asset, and you’d still have a franchise in a new stadium.

Forget the hatred and the history with the Raiders. That was decades ago, that was Al Davis, this is a different time and place. You may question the abilities of current owner, Mark Davis, the son, but there is no question about the following the team has, or its future with the young players they have drafted. And it is now about keeping an NFL franchise in this city.

The Raiders can get nothing done in Oakland. That city, and Alameda County are destitute and cannot pay their bills, much less pour money into the Coliseum City sight. Mark Davis is on record as saying his contribution, with the NFL’s help, would be 500M, more than Spanos has offered.

The Raiders as sole tenant in San Diego would be very profitable. As a co-tenant in a shared Stadium in Carson, would mean splitting everything.

Maybe the idea of ending your relationship with Spanos is distasteful to our civic leaders. What’s distasteful is the disgraceful way the owner of the team has treated this group of leaders. This is a different era, where City-County money, are available. Spanos has refused to come to the table to try and get a deal done. Maybe Mark Davis would, finding a solution to his longtime problem.

He’s not going to bring up the history of past mayors who failed. He’s not demanding a new stadium in the era of 9/11, the collapse of the global economy, San Diego and California near bankruptcies, or the real estate downturn. It’s 2015 and he would listen, whereas Spanos demanded things in impossible economic times.

Utmost important to San Diego is a new stadium. Second most important is a tenant, and if Spanos won’t negotiate, then invoke the end of his lease, and let the Raiders move in. The Chargers can go to that Toxic Waste sight in Carson, or be second tenant to Stan Kroenke, who has the team, the money and the Hollywood Park sight.

San Diego’s leadership has done all it can at this point, with an owner who does not care. Move on to the next franchise available, and get a team for our city to welcome.

I said Dean Spanos’ legacy would be written by whether he helped build a stadium in San Diego, or moved in the middle of the night to Los Angeles. It’s evident he no longer cares about his legacy in San Diego. Why should the city care after the way the owner has denounced every effort to help him make more money in his adopted town.

San Diego has shown the Chargers loyalty for 50-plus years. This owner is unwilling to show that loyalty back now, by even trying to find the right dollars-and-cents combination..

The NFL axiom about players is ‘next man up’. San Diego’s stance should be per the stadium, ‘next team up.’
 

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