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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.

to lmahon
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“Too Big To Fail”

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It’s an interesting conversation point as we move thru the mid-season point of the NFL schedule.

It has been a season so far of sagging football ratings.

Every broadcast partner the NFL has, has seen ratings drop anywhere from 10% to an alarming 24% thru the first eight weeks of the season.

Theories abound, but it might take till January to get a better handle on the whys and wherefores.

But in this first half of the 2016 campaign, the NFL has endured the worst Monday Night TV rating of all time, and that covers some 45-seasons of Monday Night football, pioneered by Cosell-Meredith-Gifford.

The newly minted Thursday Night package, a split between the NFL Network and a regular network partner, is down from a year ago, on a weekly basis.

The Sunday Night package with Al Michaels and Chris Collinsworth is off on almost a weekly basis.

And the primetime CBS and Fox games on Sunday are running behind week to week from what they were a year ago.

Pick an explanation-excuse, and many are valid, some void of rationale.

America is spending more time watching Trump TV, the ongoing war with Hillary Clinton and the topics that swirl and churn on a weekly basis. Probably some truth in that. Politics ahead of football, but maybe some election fatigue setting in.

The NFL has spread its product across so many platforms, there are now lots of ways to watch games, or to get highlights. Alot of truth in that.

Direct TV has become a household item for fans who don’t go to see the hometown team. For every fan that watches the Steelers or Cowboys or their favorite team on Direct TV, that’s one less viewer for Neilsen to survey watching regular network games.

The NFL Red Zone has become a favorite. Give me my big plays and nothing else, and links itself with those playing fantasy football. Why sit thru 3-hours plus of games and commercials and penalty flags, when I can get the highlite plays.

The NFL’s ventures into streaming, apps, different ways to get access to games, means people aren’t going to watch the network telecasts on a regular basis.

And in our microwave world of ‘I need the score and the data’, and you can get that lots of ways, the flow of information is greater, and the need to see is less of a demand now.

There are other items, but I think of lesser reasons, for declining ratings. I doubt the concussion lawsuits have anything to do with this numbers.

I doubt the penalty flags, and there are lots of them, and instant replay stops, damage the game much. It’s all part of the action.

It may be the length of the games is a detterrant, between all the commercials, plus the game stoppages for injuries, flags and under the hood experiences, games are going as much as 3-and-a half hours.

The NFL calendar could be part of it. What was a Sunday-Monday sport, has now spread to Thursday too. Couple that with the overload of college football on television, and maybe fans are at the overload-saturation point.

Of major concern should be the product on the field. Are there many great teams left in the NFL, that you have to see?

Does Tampa Bay-Atlanta on Thursday night thrill anyone? Does seeing the Bears play on Monday night mean much anymore? Are there too few good teams to be spread around to the network partners?

In essence, less marquee games than ever before.

It’s a tough call. The TV deal is an 8B a year financial windfall. Yes the NFL gets its money for now, but what about the next round of negotiations.

Lost in all the discussion, the NFL is double dipping everywhere. They should not complain about falling TV ratings, because not only are they getting the big network check, look what they haul in via Direct TV, and now all their streaming partners, and its own NFL media outlet.

But they should be scared, because the paydays may be about to change, when contracts come up for renewal with their partners..

The NFL better evaluate content, quality of play, quality of teams, the injury factor, plus all the black mark things off the field that seem to be surrounding the game itself.

Roger Goodell and the people at NFL-Park Avenue, have a growing problem on its hands. The Banks on Wall Street had similari issues. Look how that turned out.

“Too big to Fail?” Probably not. This isn’t Wall Street and the banking industry. But possibly a sport headed for some trouble, because the dollar values will change but the cost of being the NFL, salaries, insurance, health care and the game day experience, won’t.

Is Greed-Good?

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“Cubs Win-Baseball Wins”

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They ended 176-years of history and heartbreak last night in Cleveland. The Cubs ended their World Series drought, going 10-innings to outlast the Indians in the fall classic.

176-years of history and heartbreak combined for those two teams. It’s over for the Cubs. It will go on a bit longer for the Indians.

Drama, tension, big hits, and big mistakes highlited a fabulous World Series.

The Cubs had too many big bats and enough pitching. The Indians had great grit in the lineup and courage in the bullpen, but not enough starting arms.

The smartest man in the ballpark nearly cost his Cubs team a World Series ring. The smart guy in the other dugout, never really solved his teams defensive woes, and it cost Cleveland.

Terry Francona’s centerfield calamity opened up the floodgates on Wednesday night when a fly ball dropped between two outfielders, leading to an early couple of runs.

Then last night, Raji Davis made a high throw on a home plate play coming off a shallow sacrifice fly, then took the wrong route to a flyball that wound up at the fence, leading to more Cubs runs. And 1st baseman Mike Napoli couldn’t turn a hard hit ground ball into a double play that would have killed a Cubs rally.

Ditto for Joe Maddon. His team had lots of hits and baserunners, but he pulled his starter Kyle Hendricks in the 5th inning, despite the fact he was dominating on the mound.

Starter turned reliever Jon Lester threw a 2-run wild pitch that put the Tribe back in the game.

And Maddon, who foolishly used Aroldis Chapman for 3-innings on Wednesday, when he had a big lead, asked him to go 3-more last night, and the Cubs lefthander gave up a 2-run homer than sent the game to extra innings.

But the Cubs won with aggressive base-running, 3-home runs, and playing with a real edge.

The Cubs are built to win for awhile. Cleveland had this one shot, but might not be able to get there again, unless they can get this pitching saff healthy, and keep all their bats.

But for a week,the Fall Classic was great drama. So good, that the World Series outdrew NFL football on TV this past weekend.

The curse of the Billy Goat is over. Chief Wahoo probably isn’t smiling this morning in Cleveland.

It used to be you’d have to have the Yankees or Dodgers in the World Series, to get great fan following, sellouts and monster television ratings. Now it’s changed.

The Cubs win. And baseball wins too.

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