“Everyone Wants Chargers to Stay-Except Dean Spanos”

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The news came quickly out of New York.

The NFL is calling an emergency meeting next Tuesday, January 11th, four days before Dean Spanos has to make a decision on moving to LA, or staying in San Diego.

Reports are the NFL is looking at additional ways to help finance the 1.8B-Qualcomm Stadium sight.

Rumors are rampant the NFL desperately wants to keep the Chargers in San Diego, or maybe the truth is, to keep the Chargers and it s owner out of the Los Angeles market.

The Finance and Stadium committees will meet.

Reports out of New York are the NFL might be willing to come up with a “bridge loan” to help finish off the financing package for the new stadium, maybe to the tune of 200M.

There is a promise of 2-Super Bowls in a possible 4-years span, which becomes part of a ‘collateral deal’ to make financing more possible.

There is a wild rumor out of LA, that the NFL might take a portion of Stan Kroenke’s 650M territorial fee, and redirect some of that as a loan into the San Diego project. As part of the deal, LA remains a 1-team town for present, and Kroenke can start selling PSLs, and Sky Box Suites and naming rights for Hollywood Park’s new stadium. Maybe he gets exclusivitiy in that market for five years.

Here in San Diego, there are reports the City is willing to put its 200M into the project still, an off shoot of what they proposed during the CSAG negotiations.

New to the project would be a 100M contribution from San Diego State, possibly worth as much at 100M to become part of the financing project.

Disappointing is the report that the County has backed away from the project, now willing to contribute just 75M, far less than their initial investment of 150M a year ago this time during the CSAG drive.

Of course, the NFL initial investment of 300M from the league, and 350M from the Chargers is also part of this financing plan.

Reading the fine print, Dean Spanos is not putting any family money into the project. His contribution is coming from season ticket holders buying PSLs and corporate naming rights and Stadium advertisers. Stunningly, no one ever seems to raise that as a troubling aspect of all this.

The NFL has its hands full. On Monday the Raiders will make application to move to Las Vegas. No one fully knows the issues there. Will Mark Davis be willling to sell minority share of the team to casino owner Sheldon Adelson as part of the deal? Would the NFL wants a casnio investor as a club partner? Is the Ronnie Lott-Marcus Allen Fortress Investment group really viable.

That’s an Oakland issue, so San Diego does not care.

But in the big picture of things, it seems Roger Goodell and fellow owners want to keep LA open as a viable option, for expansion, thereby excluding the Chargers-Raiders from moving into Los Angeles.

Everyone, the fans, the teams, the league want the Chargers to stay in San Diego. Everyone but owner Dean Spanos, who has till the 15th to decide, stay here, move there.

Oh they drop hints at the Fortress about loving San Diego so much, wanting to stay. If so, why did he blow off this Mayor and that County Supervisor, for all of 2015, as the city-county consortium desperately tried to do a deal at the Q? And why did he drive Measure C on the ballot with no input from key civic leaders?

Hoping it would be defeated and he could blame San Diego voters, on top of leaders, for failing him in his hour of need?

He’s the one who has failed. Now we see if this 11th hour set of ideas, on the 11th of January, can keep the team in San Diego.

Sadly it still looks as if Spanos wants someone else to build him a stadium, and pay for it, and give it to him. The (30-2) vote against his Carson proposal should tell you lots about how he is viewed at the NFL leadership level. The ‘no vote’ and the ‘no-shows’ at the Stadium here tell you much about the community feeling towards the owner.

Spanos has continually told NFL owners of the political leadership dysfunction in San Diego. Does that word fit the business and football operations of his franchise. On the field, the bad record, as the gates, as fans sold tickets to Raiders and Chiefs followers this past month.

The NFL may be ‘too big to fail. The Chargers look as if they are failing, on the field, and on the business front.

Everyone wants the Bolts to stay in San Diego. The owner seems to want a free lunch, a new stadium, and other people’s money in his pockets.

This sure looks like what the government did back in 2008. Bail out Wall Street.

It looks like the NFL may have to bail out Dean Spanos to keep his team in San Diego.

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