“Truths & Lies”

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Can you take the man at his word?

That’s the game being played around the nation today, as San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos meets with the Committee on Los Angeles, about his interest in moving to Los Angeles.

Before embarking on the Big Apple adventure, Spanos spoke out about how he had tried for 14-years to get San Diego to develop a plan for a new stadium. How he came up with 9-different plans for stadiums, from Qualcomm, to Chula Vista, from Oceanside golf courses, to Indian reservation lands.

That story in only half-true. Yes he proposed, via slick brochures, showing what he’d like built. He never presented specific financing of how to pay for the stadium he and his rich (1.1B) family wanted given to them.

This from the same family who were given a stadium renovation package of new seating, a new owners box, and a new practice facility.

This from an owner who got a ticket guarantee for years, regardless of how bad the product on the field was.

This from a group that had their lease re-worked, always in their favor, multiple times.

The nation should know the difference between reality and the Spanos version of revisionist history.

Lost in the calendar of comments about trying for ’14-years’ is another untruth. In that 14-year span, our nation suffered the atrocity of 9/11. We had the global economy collapse. California went into near bankruptcy as a state. San Diego nearly went bankrupt with the pension scandal. And then we had the real estate recession on top of all that.

Yes, we have horrible mayoral leadership, stretching from drunks to perverts and many in between, who never got anything done.

Putting aside bad economics and bad history, the Spanos family has refused to sit across the table and talk to the quality leadership now provided by Mayor Kevin Faulconer and County leader Ron Roberts. Spanos has had mouthpiece Mark Fabiani, insult, condemn, and denigrate every step civic leaders have tried to make to insure keeping a valued treasure, the Chargers.

Now the scorched earth policy Spanos allowed to happen on his watch, may have turned into a backdraft fire. Pick any of the rumors out there, and maybe now you know why Spanos ended his year plus silence on the Stadium issues with the vanilla comment, he might entertain talks with San Diego, if the NFL does not allow the team to move to LA.

Want to know why this has happened now?

Maybe Spanos has found he cannot get the Carson project built. Maybe his bankers have struck out trying to find investors. Maybe problems have arisen with the toxicity on large chunks of that land.

Maybe Spanos doesn’t want to partner up with Stan Kroenke on Hollywood Park. Maybe Spanos doesn’t have the 500M territorial fee and the 500M-it would cost for his share to co-finance Inglewood.

Maybe he has been told the NFL will let the Rams move there because Kroenke is a business doer-big thinker, compared to Spanos, who has never accomplished anything while owning the franchise here. Did he ever find a way to get a stadium built? Did he ever take over the LA market and make them Chargers fans in the 20-years he’s had to plant his flag in Los Angeles?

The answer is a negative to all the ideas his side of the street has presented. His team can’t win on the field. He can’t make the business end of it work either. And now he wants to make the world think he is the victim, and he wants San Diego to welcome him back with open arms.

The rich man owner wants a stadium given to him. It was that way in 1998….in the mid 2000s….and now in 2016. He can’t accomplish the task.

And his fellow NFL owners don’t care about San Diego. So much for the lip service about ‘home cities’. From Robert Kraft to Jim Irsay, Miami to Minnesota and anywhere in between, all his fellow owners care about is their cut of the pie in LA.

Don’t take the man at his word. The truth is out there. The lies no longer have any credibility.  San Diego residents and fans know.  Hopefully the NFL will find out next.

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