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“This-That-Some of the Other”

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Chargers…If the Bolts are an underperforming team, so is Miami, in which the arrow was supposed to be pointed up with young QB-Ryan Tannehill. At least the Bolts have an explanation-excuse..injury after injury…Tannehill just seems to have regressed…The only big plays Ndomakong Suh makes are when he stomps on someone, kicks them, or goes to the bank to cash a paycheck…Why do I think Albert Haynesworth when I see Suh play?

Dean Spanos..Hard to believe Bolts owner has to “evaluate” what just happened on election day, his Measure C-Stadium proposal, rejected at the ballot box. The man lives in a fantasy world, acting as if he has leverage still. He has never had leverage, since NFL owners voted the Rams to LA and sent him back to San Diego. He blinked when Mayor Kevin Faulconer refused to approve his Measure for nearly 6-months.

Padres…Ever heard the name Frank “Trader” Lane, former GM back in the 50s and 60s, Cardinals, Indians and White Sox. Made his career by dealing away the likes of stars of those days, Minnie Minoso, Rocky Colavito and more. Now I hear AJ Preller is shopping 3rd baseman Yanger Solarte amongst others. Think AJ, think Frank Lane. AJ cannot stop making deals.

Aztecs Football..No one, and I mean no one is paying attention to San Diego State football, not running back DJ Pumphrey, who could go over (2,000) all purpose yards tomorrow night at Nevada..no a defense that has given up just 2-touchdowns in the last five games. Not one sentence nationally about either.

USD Football…Ditto for the Toreros, who play in the shadows of Division 1-AA football, the top defense in the nation at that level…they’ve allowed just 3-TDs in their last 5-games and will be headed back the playoffs later this month.

Aztecs Hoops…SDSU begins the season tonite with a walkover game against lowly USD. The Aztecs unveil lots of new pieces. They look so athletic and are led by two great veteran guards. They win tonite, but the real test if what happens Monday in Spokane when they face West Coast Conference power Gonzaga, which is also loaded.

USD Hoops..This will be painful for 2nd year coach Lamont Smith. He went (9-21) last year, his top big man graduated along with a shooter. He starts 3-freshmen tonite, has little size, and not much experience. A year from tonight they will be better, but this will be another awful season. The program has never been the same since Brad Holland left.

Gulls…Working agreements are great, if the NHL parent club drafts well, and signs international players. The Anaheim Ducks have. But working agreements are awful if that same parent club keeps calling up players. The Gulls have lost 5-in a row, and can never put the same lineup on the ice from one game to the next. The Ducks have called up their top 3-goal scorers and top defenseman 3-different times in the first 4-weeks of the AHL season.

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“Memo to the Chargers Owner”

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Woe to be the owner of the Chargers. Woe to have the last name Spanos and be disliked so much in your adopted home town.

Woe to have spent millions to try and buy favoritism, well-being, and votes on a stadium issue, only to be rejected.

Dean Spanos and is family are under seige, rightly or wrongly.

You could dislike them for the product on the field, possibly looking at another losing season, which would be the 23rd in 33-years of ownership.

You could grieve they’ve been to just one Super Bowl, or made fatal mistakes in the mishandling of the decisions on their most popular coaches, Don Coryell, Bobby Ross and Marty Schottenheimer.

You can surely hold a grudge at all of the business decisions, from the Stadium Super Bowl seat expansion, to the egregious ticket guarantee, to the starts, stops, failures and off ramp activities involving the building of a stadium and the threats to move to Los Angeles.

If the (30-2) NFL owners vote to dismiss the Spanos idea of the Carson Stadium wasn’t the jolt of a lifetime, then maybe this setback at the voter’s booth, might superceed all of his disappointments of owning this NFL franchise.

The Spanos’ speak of the world ‘loyalty’ so often, and it counts for something, if you are on the receiving end of their family loyalty. Sons get cushy front office jobs. Employees who had towed the line, keep their jobs.

But player loyalty has come only after pain of separation. Fan loyalty has not been rewarded, especially with the on-going threats of a move to LA, echoed from Spanos spokesman on a regular basis.

Dean Spanos wants to be liked and respected.

Tough to do when you keep seeing his actions, read his press statements, and wait for the next move that goes against logic, from someone who says he badly wants to stay in San Diego.

So we have reached a point where someone has to step forward and make a positive move to pick up the pieces of the shattered relationships, and voted down proposals we have seen.

Very simply said, Dean Spanos doesn’t need more time to think things thru. He needs to take action to show he is going to stay in San Diego.

He has the option to move January 15th, invoking a clause to relocate to Los Angeles. He can do it in January 2017, and could also use the clause in January 2018.

If he wants to get a stadium bill passed, end the threat of a move. Void the 2017-clause, go public, commit to work the next year with all the key factions, city-county, the hotel industry, tourism, convention center people.

Find alternative funding plans, consider the Qualcomm sight, add in the potential of using hotel tax money, Chargers-NFL money, city-county money, and build in Mission Valley for football, and at Tailgate Park for the annex.

But the only way to have credible talks, free of agendas, is to end the threats, by voiding the January 2017 LA-clause, giving this one full year of all parties on board, to find a blueprint that works.

Dean Spanos cannot rescue his good name, unless he is willing to do the right thing, keep the franchise here, and to push the ball forward in a collective deal that helps his team, this city, and his legacy.

Ending the LA threat is the most credible thing he can do, and should be the first step to take the other steps to get a stadium built.

Anything short of that is only empty rhetoric, time wasted, and more money spent.

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“Defeats & Disappointments”

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I am a big believer in the infrastructure of your city.

I believe you need to invest in your city, help its industries, and take care of its citizens.

Building a football stadium and a convention access helps make your city a better place to live and work, but doing that, spending resources on that, when tax money raised could be used for police hirings, emergency vehicle purchases, and street repairs, are probably just as important.

As the Chargers Stadium Measure C went down to defeat with horrible early voter returns, you had to weigh the wants of a rich owner, and the needs of a city, that still has internal problems.

Somewhere, somehow, sometime, San Diego has to find the resources to build a new NFL stadium.

It’s equivalent to building an office building for a banking center that might be here.

You don’t want to run off Bumble Bee Tuna and its business here. You surely don’t want to run off the Chargers either, for they are an industry, that employs people.

But this morning, we have police protection shortcomings, a homeless citizen problem, and multiples of other issues.

So the tug of war between needs of the community vs the wants of the owner of the football team, will continue to take place.

Why did Measure C go down so badly, (61%) No…(39%) Yes?

People weren’t educated enough. They put out a 114-page book detailing the plans. Who has the time, much less the intellect to read something of that magnitude.

The Chargers will tell you they spent 7M-advertising Measure C, but other sources say a large part of that was spent on gettlng people to sign the initiative, to put it on the ballot, not so much educating the voters.

Can’t tell you how many people I came across who thought they’d be taxed for a stadium, failing to understand it was a tourist hotel tax, not a tax on you and me.

Chargers history has lots to do with this failure. Dean Spanos’ sanctioned scorched earth policy put out by Mark Fabiani.

Add to that a year long romance trying to move his franchise to Los Angels, so he could make more money before he put it up for sale. Selling a 2B-franchise in LA brings bigger return than a 1.6B team in small market San Diego.

Add in the confrontation crisis with the hotel industry, the convention people, tourism, and so many others, and you see why this thing failed.

The solution is simple. Everyone gets a seat at the big roundtable in the Mayor’s office, and everyone gets input into what a new stadium and annex should look like, and where it should be located, and how it should be financed.

Easier said than done, going forward.

But where we have just come from, is worse than what we are facing this morning.

Time for the city to rally behind the Chargers. Time for Team Spanos to realize they need to be a better business partner with the city of San Diego also.

No time for a blame game now. Time to go forward with a better plan.

Defeats and Disappointments. That’s all the Spanos family has known in 32-years of ownership of this franchise, and the relationship they have had with the city.

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“Vote Yes-Vote No…How Will They Vote?”
by Lee ‘Hacksaw’ Hamilto
CW-6 Sports

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They go to the polls all day until tonite. They close at 8pm.

At stake, the possibility the city would build a new NFL Stadium and a Convention Center Annex.

San Diego is doing what alot of other major cities have done, to get facilities built, taxing the tourist.

Measure C, to build the stadium and the annex will cost 1.8B. It is to be partially funded by an increase in the Hotel Tax in the city of San Diego, from its current 12.5% to 16.5%. Some get sticker shock, but it really amounts to about 1-dollar per day per hotel room rented.

The push has taken nearly 15-years to get to this point. Aging Qualcomm Stadium is on the brink of falling down, built in 1967, renovated multiple times, and expanded, for baseball and then a couple of Super Bowls.

It’s not Fenway Park nor Wrigley Field. It’s not a shrine to sport, but more like a slum, if you ever walked around the interior infrastructer.

Minnesota, Houston, New Orleans are amongst the latest cities that creatively financed new facilities for its population base and its teams.

It has been a terrible tug-of-war between the Chargers ownership and the city leadership for more than a decade.

The Mayor’s office has been frequented by drunks and perverts, incompetents and idiots. Each has struggled to do their job, much less accomplish anything moving forward.

Cleveland, once upon a time filed for bankruptcy. San Diego was on the brink of that, and then worse things, with mayoral resignations and the like.

So we arrive today with the Chargers desperately needing a new stadium. They have told one and all they tried for 14-years. In honesty, they printed glitzy circulars, and said we want this, San Diego pay for it. You know how that has been received.

Now we have Measure C, building a stadium and the center annex to attract more businesses and functions here. They say Super Bowls and NCAA Final Fours will come, amongst conventions and maybe as many as 200-more dates.

Should be a slam dunk, but instead it appears to be going down like a quarterback sack.

History has reappeared. People with agendas. The groups lined up against it, stretch from downtown across the Coronado Bridge.

The Vote No-group; all the city councilmen; the hotel industry; the Convention Center leadership; the influential Comic con convention, and on and on.

Some dislike the Spans family. Some think the annex needs to be on the bayfront next to the current convention center. Some are obstructionists plain and simple.

Agendas, everyone has agendas.

You do recall it was a real war between the Padres and lawyers before Petco Park finally got built. 22-lawsuits filed, everyone of them thrown out of court.

Of course, obstructionist desperately tried to block, and failed, the entire Convention Center project, back in the day. Look at how great that facility is.

It got built. it rejuvenated the Gaslamp District, is is a revenue stream and a destination point now for all things, Padres to concerts and more.

But this is different. John Moores money and Larry Lucchino’s brilliance gave Petco Park impetus. They had experience at Camden Yards-Baltimore and PNC Park-Pittsburgh.

The Padres urged the city leadership and the business associated to be part of the planning stage. It got done, and lots have benefited from it.

The Chargers attempt to build a stadium, anywhere, everywhere, has failed badly. Money, land acquisition, politics have become bad partners. Team Spanos has no track record of success, in this venture, and not much on the sporting field.

In a firestorm that lasted over 9-months, the City and County tried to finance a deal with civic contributions at the Qualcomm sight. The Chargers refused to even talk, much less negotiate a deal.

Off they went on their own fabricating a stadium-annex package to fit their needs, and what they imagined would solve the crowded convention center issues. But it has been met with fierce resistance.

Alot of the negativity has to do with agendas. The Hotel people, the tourism people, the conventioneers. They were never invited to take part in the planning for this, now they don’t support it.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer, whose attempts to package the Q-sight, took 8-months of nasty criticism from Chargers mouthpiece Mark Fabiani,per the instructions of owner Dean Spanos.

It was just last month, after the mayor got strong concessions from Spanos, he has signed off supporting the deal. But nothing is signed and lawyers say they are concerned about the legality of a ‘trust us handshake’ with the Chargers.

At issue, cost over-runs, the city liability on issues and more Faulconer would go ahead with the hotel tax deal, believing the Chargers would not give back on their word.

The word of the Chargers, an issue unto itself.

The NFL team owner said he wished ‘last January’ had not occurred. I wonder what part of last January he meant. The scorecard is amazing.

Fabiani spends 9-months slurring the city-county consortium trying to put together the Q package.

The Chargers sign a partnership deal to develop an NFL Stadium in Carson with the Raiders.

The team lease options land in Santa Ana for a training facility.

It takes part in press conferences in Carson. It hires execs to run the campaign to the NFL office, saying they belong as the team in Los Angeles.

The NFL blows them out of the water, by a (30-2) vote, saying the Rams will pay for the new stadium and move to LA.

The Chargers are given a window to co-develop the sight at Hollywood Park, or just become a tenant. They sign a deal to go to LA if they don’t get the San Diego deal done.

Then they begin work on the downtown stadium here, without any input from any of the other key players, from the Mayor’s office to the most influential people in the business community.

What part of January do you regret the most Dean?

Add to that, he is not putting a penny of his own money into the project. The Chargers 350M comes from you and me buying PSL seats, and your business or my business buying the corporate sponsorship name.

End result, the long line of people stretched around the block against all this.

And Spanos wonders where he has gone wrong, and why he has no support.

The quagmire of the 66-percent state mandated vote vs the possibility of a 50% vote still remains unresolved too.

And by the way, good luck reading the 114-page booklet that describes Measure C. Chaos, confusion, complexities.

So when the polls close tonite, most think this fails badly.

Oh yes, Spanos has the right to move to Los Angeles and be a tenant in the Rams Stadium. But he still has to pay 550M territorial fee to make that happen…and most don’t think he has that money.

And by the way, the Rams own LA right now, emotionally, physically and financially.

Who can save this? The man in the white hat will show up, Mayor Faulconer, if the measure loses, needs to bring all parties into a room, and negotiate a deal that is good for all.

That involves the Hotel industry, the Convention Center people, Tourism (our number 1-industry here) and all the shakers and movers in our city. Whereas Spanos gave us a package he liked, Faulconer must give us a package that is good for all parties concerned.

Add in, the county should be part of this, for this team, is a regional asset. And there is City-County money there to be put in the pot, whether downtown at the new sight, or at the old Q-sight which has plenty of land available.

The Stadium Civil War, which has raged unstopped since 1998, needs to reach the cease-fire stage. Maybe it starts on Wednesday morning.

City leadership has let the fans, the town and the team down for a long time. Dean Spanos has let the same people down, not just with a poor product on the field, but by his actions over the last 9-months. The hostage situation, ‘we might move to LA’, ends tomorrow night at 1pm.

He’s failed in every effort to get a stadium built. No one is giving a stadium to a so-called rich man, especially that man. Credibility, leadership, past history, all of it bad, has gotten us to where we are this morning.

When San Diego is done voting tomorrow, then the real talking should start.

All the leverage belongs to the Mayor. The owner now has very little. The Chargers will likely invoke a media blackout, to ‘examine’ all their options. Press releases have already been prepared by the NFL team detailing whatever their new game plan is.

The real press release I want is the one from the real leader on the project, Team Faulconer.

Vote as you like. Be prepared to possibly vote again, next June, for that will likely be the real measure that gets a stadium built. Kevin Faulconer and Ron Roberts will get done what Dean Spanos-Mark Fabiani and Fred Maas did not.

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“Chargers…1-Victory..Can They Get Another?”

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The often maligned defense came up big. The oft-questioned young running back showed up as a stud. And the coaching staff won the matchup game that changed the flow of the entire game.

For once all things clicked.

Chargers (43-35) Tennessee.

It all started early. The Chargers hit the Titans with formations they had not seen, and could not cover. End result, Antonio Gates caught a TD pass early, and wound up with 5-receptions early.

It forced the Titans to change their defense, and it allowed running back Melvin Gordon big time running room. When he was done, he had runs of 43-and-47 yards, enroute to a carreer best (196Y) rushing, and an additional (65Y) in receptions. A heavy duty performance.

And the defense stepped up, with takeaways and points scored off turnovers. They did not get there with the blitz, and yes Marcus Mariota hit them with a bunch of big pass plays, trying to play catch up.

But the Chargers made big plays. Another Casey Hayward interception. How did, why did, Green Bay let this guy go?

Brandon Flowers, the slot-corner, jumped a route, picked off a pass, and ran it in for a score. He’s played better the last month than he had in over a year.

And the Chargers defense chased down Mariota on a read option play. End result, fumble, Dwight Lowrey touchdown run with the loose ball.

The Chargers scored 17-points off the 3-turnovers.

Oh there was adversity. More injuries. 5-major penalties, some of them really stupid.

But in the end, for four quarters of football, the Chargers made lots of big plays, beating Tennessee for the 7th straight time at Qualcomm Stadium.

The win pushes the record to (4-5), and they are still way back of the other 3-teams in the division.

Next comes Miami, and a chance to continue this mini-winning streak.

The victory means little in terms of the vote tomorrow for the new Stadium.

But it gives hope that a team playing hard, led by a warrior of a quarterback, can win some games.

You wonder if there had never been a Joey Bosa holdout, where they would be in the playoff race, with this favorable schedule infront of them.

You think they’ve uncovered more good young players, and if they can get all the injured back next year, with Rivers at the controls, maybe they end this playoff drought.

Sunday brought them a win. We see what Tuesday brings them at the polls.

But Victory Monday feels pretty good, considering all the bad things that have occurred to this franchise on-and-off the field.