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“Football is Back in San Diego”

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San Diego Chargers fans, left behind when ownership yanked their team, moving to LA, will get the chance to see pro football next February, when the Alliance for American Football puts a team into SDCCU Stadium. Highlites from their Press Conference at Stadium.

Coach Mike Martz–head coach…ex-Rams head coach (56-36) and Super Bowl appearance.

Jon Kitna-ex Seahawks-Bengals-Lions coch-hired Offensive Coordinator
Larry Marmie-ex Arizona State-Cardinals coch-Defensive Coordinator
Jackie Slater-legendary Rams tackle at OL coach
Dave Boller-Director Football Operations

75-players in camp to open in January
50-man active roster

Team offices at Qualcomm sight-not at Chargers Park.

JK McKay-Director of Operations-AAF
..1st thing we knew-had to get franchises in right cities
..Lot of players to look at-they just need a platform
..No age limit on players
..QBs will get more opportunities in AAF
..Football in purest form-chance to play -grow-not about money
..Season will run February 9th into March
..10-game schedule
..5-Home-5 Road
..Will talk to NFL about accessing players on developmental squad
..Teams will have regional draft of players from West Coast
..NFL Europe discovered Kurt Warner-Jon Kitna-we can do same
..No independent owners-league run operation.
..San Diego is a great professional football city

Mike Martz-Head Coach
..I want speed-speed-more speed
..Jon Kitna is a great mind at QB-play calling
..Larry Marmie-defensive coordinator
..TJ Housmanzadeh-wide receiver coach
..Dre Bly-secondary coach
..Coaching football in San Diego doesn’t get any better than this.
..Don Coryell passing principals are my offense
..I have Don Coryell original offensive notes as a head coach
..Coryell was so ahead of his time..mismatches-how to attack defenses
..I learned at the feet of Coryell-Sid Gillman.
..I get chills being back in this stadium.
..We will throw the ball a lot

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“Big Leaders-Big Problems”

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They are the leaders, they are paid a lot of money, they run big time businesses, and they have lots of issues to deal with.

Roger Goodall, Rob Manfred, Gary Bettman and Adam Silver, the commissioners of the big sports, are dealing with crisis situations.

NFL:. .TV ratings have tumbled 17% over a two year span. Attendance has dropped too. And the league is reeling under the weight of two years of combat and controversy involving the players public stance on social injustice issues in society. The red-white-blue has been caught now in the vice of black-vs-white issues across America. And there is no solution, now with the league renewing the dispute by stating players must stand or remain the lockeroom during the anthem. Add this onn-going oil fire to the already stained credibility of the league, over the concussions lawsuit, violence on the field, the on-going injury issues, and a likely bitter fight coming wth the Union. For Roger Goodell, a contract extension in his pocket, the controversies, aren’t going away, just piling up.

MLB…The game has rallied in the last decade, revenues are up, so is attendance, and the postseason is electric. But there are problems with the style of the game, the length of the game, and the never-ending issues about PEDs, the black market of drugs. As the landscape of the game has changed, metrics, analytics, have taken over the game, just in the last four years. Home runs and strikeouts are dominating the conversation. Is the ball juiced? Is the game too long? Should we change rules to take the shift out of the game. Has ‘veto’ and ‘launch angle’ overwhelmed the game? Rob Manfred needs to tread cautiously going forward, not to impact the competitiveness nature of the game by changing rules that impact strategy. And a decade later, no one has solved the stadium crisis in Oakland and Tampa Bay, the sick franchises still in operating.

NBA….They’re all making a lot of money. The dream team concept still exists, and those teams are the ones playing into spring in the post season. The union will not give back the idea of ‘max contracts’ . Of greater debate comes now the future of the ‘1-and-Done’ rule in the draft, with a general consensus the young players needs to stay in college longer, and not look just for the big payday. Adam Silver has a good thing going, and tinkering is all that needs to be discussed.

NHL….The league has hit a jackpot with expansion into Las Vegas. Big money. An electric following in a new city. Still to come, the next expansion, into Seattle. There are still ailing franhises though, Arizona, Carolina, Florida, and there are still vacant markets, Quebec City, Hamilton, that could helps solve that problem. Arena issues in Calgary and Phoenix are still unresolved. . But the NHL is facing something even more severe, a huge concussion lawsuit. Even worse is the public statement of NHL leadership that says there is no connection between concussions to hockey players, fighting, and CTE, despite all the research done by Boston University on deceased athletes. Call it denial or stupidity, but someone is going to pay a severe financial price when this is all done. Gary Bettman may have done great things in leading the NHL back into enormous popularity, but it appears he is doing a terrible disservice to the sport and the players, with his stance on CTE. Trouble is looming on and off the ice.

BIG PICTURE….And if each of the leaders isn’t dealing with enough, just think, here comes the Supreme Court ruling on gambling on all sporting events, state-by-state run. The big leaders make big money, and they all have big issues to deal with going forward..

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“San Diego-What Kind of Sports City Are We?”

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San Diego, home of a great year long climate, with some of the highest housing prices in the US, is a city looking for an identity….in sports.

For 55-years, the home of the Chargers, till the greed of the Spanos family yanked the franchise from our grasp despite decades of loyalty, and just 12-winning seasons in 33-years under the Spanos family flag.

Since 1969, Padres baseball has been a mix of constant ownership change, and even more upper level management changes, has given us 2-World Series seasons, some divisional titles, but more losing seasons than ever. Better days are coming with the wild spending spree to rebuild the farm system but it’s not here yet.

We have warring factions, getting ready for a November ballot vote on a soccer-college football stadium.

San Diego may be ranked the 18th biggest ‘media market’ in the country in terms of radio and television, but it seems much smaller than that.

We don’t have a lot of Fortune 500-corporations here. We have more suburbia than we have a vibrant downtown. Our population base might be 3.5M in the county. Our ability to get things done, stadiums, facilities, schools, libraries, civic improvements, has been an enormous challenge.

Voting on financing has never been easy. Quality leadership from the Mayor’s office has been questionable up till recent times.

So who are we in the sports world?

We have 1-pro team, the Padres, plus 2-university athletic programs very few have come to embrace, despite the success on the field at SDSU and the quality of the institution that USD is.

We are Portland, without the rain, a Rose City that calls the NBA-Trailblazers its proud franchise. They have thePortland Timber soccer team, and the Oregon Ducks-Oregon State Beavers down I-5.

We are Buffalo, without the snow and cold. They have the Bills and the Sabres, so they are actually better than us.

We are Jacksonville, without the heat and humidity. They have the Jaguars and that’s all.

Here in San Diego we keep getting all kinds of feelers, of teams and leagues arriving.

MLS Soccer seems on the horizon, but until FS-Investors wins the November election, for a Stadium, that would give them an inside track to get one of the last expansion teams to be given out. But is MLS a real game-changer?

A 2nd soccer franchise wants to build a smaller stadium for a team in the second division, the North American Soccer League. Even less impactful.

The legacy of the indoor franchise, the San Diego Sockers has eroded away as the leagues crumbled under the weight of heavy contracts.

The Aztecs want to build their own stadium as part of a Campus expansion, but until SDSU can configure a way to join a Power 5-Conference, the Big 12,nothing changes in terms of their identity support.

USD has basketball, an also ran in the smaller West Coast Conference, an elite non scholarship football program,that few pay attention to.

UCSD is moving up to Division 1-status in the Big West Conference, but that is four years in the making to engineer that move, and questions remain if a big league city would pay attention to an off the radar conference. Just ask USD about that.

College baseball, despite being based in a huge recruiting era, has never put either of its teams in Omaha, home of the college World Series.

The San Diego Gulls have found a niche, leading the American Hockey League in attendance, but it is indeed minor league.

The Alliance of American Football will unveil plans to put a 2019 spring league team here, with a former NFL head coach Mike Martz to run it. But the reality is, each NFL team has 90-players on its off season rosters, that’s a total of 2,880-players under contract in OTA and mini camp workouts. Will displaced Chargers fans get excited about seeing players #2,881 thru 3,000 making up AAF rosters in the spring.? Maybe if the prices are low.

And the Valley View Casino Center is taking about bringing in a new team in a new Arena Football League. The old AFL has pretty much ceased operation, though there is a legacy of guys who wound up in the NFL, the Kurt Warner’s of the world, who made it to the NFL. But that era seems over. Would fans show up just to do something in off season? Maybe.

Add in the arrival of rugby and lacrosse, plus so-called World Team Tennis in the short summer schedule, and you wonder if anyone is really interested.

And what does it say about our city, to be banking its hopes to revitalize its sports image by importing all these second tier events?

I remember the night the Chargers left, and the Mayoral press conference of Kevin Falconer and his comments “San Diego will be alright-and the Chargers made a bad decision’.

The Bolts may have made a bad decision, in LA, where they are an after-thought on that sports landscape. But San Diego is not alright either. .

We lost our NFL team, and we have lost out sports identity, no matter how many so-called teams and leagues show up here to call San Diego its home.

Who are we? How do we get better? How do we change our image?

What kind of a sports city are we right now? Not much, sadly.

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“NBA-The Great Debate-The Greatest?”

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We’re headed to the NBA finals. Just don’t know if what we will see later this week, can top what we saw the past couple of weeks.

The debate is indeed raging, who is the greatest modern day player in NBA history?

We’re not talking about the Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain era. Jerry West and Magic Johnson were from another time. Don’t consider Julius Erving these days.

Michael Jordan was by himself in greatness.

Many believe what has transpired this past week, this past playoff series, this past season, from LeBron James, surpasses all that.

King James, averaging 35-points a game has become a 1-man team on a dispirited, injured, Cleveland team. Go pick any night you want, 35-46-48 point nights, and it is amazing, considering everyone knows what’s coming, and still cannot stop him.

But the NBA is a league of exceptional stars, athletes, leaders, and personalities.

Cleveland has been the benefactor of Lebon’s willing his woefully short team to these finals.

Boston nearly got there with tremendous young talents, Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum. Consider this too. Boston got to the final minute of the 7th game in the East finals before losing, and they did it without Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving. Hayward went down the opening week of the season. Irving went under the knife the last month And they almost got there.

Houston heads home disappointed, the loss of Chris Paul to a recurring hamstring injury, a key component in the late playoff fade. But as dynamic and explosive as the Rockets could be, the Rockets were flawed, live and die by the 3-point shot A (7-for-44) shooting nite from the arc killed them in their final playoff loss. But take nothing away from the individual greatness of the Beard and CP3.

And that brings us to the greatness of the team, Golden State, not the individual, but the team. It’s Kevin Durant many nights, it could be the explosiveness of Steph Curry, on the big outside shooter Klay Thompson. But its also the toughness from Draymond Green and Andre Iguodala. And don’t discount the leadership of Steve Kerr.

The NBA finals will be anti-climatic. Great team (Warriors) vs great player (LeBron). But marvel at the specialness of all these stars, regardless of the money they make, for the talent they bring to the court every night in the post-season.

The NBA slogan, ‘I love this game’, may not be far off the mark, this time of the year.

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Memorial Day weekend. Picnics, family, Padres games, the Indy 500, the NBA playoffs and the NHL playoffs, the Stanley Cup finals. Lots to see, experience and think about.

Memorial Day weekend is a time to remember also. We see hometown heroes amongst us in San Diego. The Padres icon broadcaster Jerry Coleman flew fighters and even landed upside down on a flight deck. The late Red Sox hero Ted Williams was a fighter pilot both in the Pacific and in Korea, survived two crashes, and came home to super stardom.

There are two Purple Hearts in my house, family members who served in our World Wars, were wounded, killed, and whose relatives’ lives were forever changed.

When you come from an extended large family of that era, you are influenced by their experiences. Influenced by those you know, those you loved, those you lost.

I’ve been to Arlington, to the Punch Bowl cemetery in Hawaii, to Rosecrans Cemetery here, and know full well about the U.S. cemetery at Normandy.

I wept when I went to the black granite Vietnam Wall in Washington and was moved by the D-Day Memorial in Virginia. If you go to the Balboa Naval Hospital you are impacted. When you know them, when you care about them, when you see them, when you ache for them and their memories, it leaves a lasting impression.

Maybe it is my Baby Boomer mortality catching up to me. Friends are passing, saying goodbyes to family members. Virtually all of them are linked to the military. In this situation, Memorial Day becomes more than a holiday.

I hardly know the full background, except my dad was a Sea Bee in the Navy, in the Pacific. He built runways as the Navy, then the Marines brought in planes to continue the assault to recapture all those islands from Japan. He told me only once about being shot at and diving under planes to avoid snipers. My dad was only 22 at the time and experiencing that.

Nick was my Godfather. He was slight of build, big of heart, with no fear. He was a point man hit by snipers in a hedgerow at Anzio. His life was forever changed. He spoke only once about it to me. Twenty-nine surgeries later, he died from wounds. They gave me his Purple Heart, ribbons, the 1944 telegrams that said he was killed in action, then missing in action, then rescued.

Jack was my uncle. A decorated journalist, island hopping the Pacific with Douglas McArthur. He wrote for the International News Service, the forerunner of UPI. He saw horror and death. He interviewed Tojo, who tried to commit suicide. He covered the Peace Treaty signing on the USS Missouri. He came home a broken man. He was never the same sports journalist covering the old Brooklyn Dodgers after that. They gave me his war photos, ribbons, and wire service stories when he passed. He never spoke of it.

Danny was another uncle. I never knew much, except that he was a teenager who died on the Bataan Death March. I found his name on a plaque, but like so many others, nothing else. Gone at 19.

Vin was a paratrooper. Jumped into the dark behind the Normandy lines. He was 24 and part of the glider brigade. He was wounded twice, but did come home. His Purple Heart is in a glass case, with a piece of autographed fabric from a crashed glider that went into the woods when they missed the landing zone. Virtually all with him perished.

Vito was in South Africa, chasing Rommel across the desert. All that heavy infantry fire led to his loss of hearing.

Joe was a medic in the heat, humidity and suffering in the Philippines. His lasting memory before he died was malaria and quinine.

Smitty was 19 and a turret gunner on B-17 and B-24 raids. The average life span of those crews was 13 flights. He made 35 missions, over places like Ploesti and Dresden. He laughs that his pilot was only 19, old enough to drop bombs, but not old enough to get a drivers license in Michigan. He told stories till dementia took over his mind.

Curt was a gunner on board a Flying Fortress when 60-planes in all went down in one day over Regensberg, Germany, flying without fighter support.

Memorial Day touches friends too. Seven in my tiny graduating class on Long Island were lost in my war, Vietnam.

Murph was a wrestler and a jokester. A land mine ended it all very quickly for him. Lew was a basketball player taken out on a ridge by either sniper fire or friendly fire. Charley went off on night patrol in the jungles; he never returned after the firefight. Three others were done in not by the VC, but by Agent Orange.

Memorial Day is also about brothers. One who is a career officer, with service time in Iraq and Afghanistan. He struggles with seeing wounded men booby trapped when our medics go to treat them. He angered many by saying “if you fire on my soldiers from a mosque, it is no longer a mosque.” He has sat on transports with the caskets and body bags of his soldiers.

The other brother is in anti-terrorism, who never forgot 9/11 and what he sensed the minute the second plane went into the towers. He won’t speak, but he knows much, and this weekend means much to him too.

I will visit a cemetery to say thanks and to remember. An aging friend, who landed on Normandy, told me the only thing missing from the movie Saving Private Ryan was the smell of diesel fuel. Another in a rest home was part of the Royal Air Force and the heroism of the Battle of Britain, with burns and ribbons as remembrances.

Fly a flag this weekend. Enjoy the picnics, the Padres, the Indy 500, the NBA and the NHL, but remember the past.

Many went and came back. Many went and never came back. Many went, came back, never the same.

Memorial Day is a hard time for me. Two Purple Hearts are in my house. A thankful heart. A heavy heart too.

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