Moving Day

The San Diego Chargers are moving to Los Angeles, where they will share a stadium with the newly returned Rams.  Owner Dean Spanos used the team website to say goodbye to the Chargers’ former home, which “will always be part of our identity,” except on game days.

From what I read, the Chargers are going to have to pay the NFL a relocation fee of somewhere between $550-$650 million, this in order to play in a soccer stadium with all of 30,000 seats until the new stadium is ready in 2019.  Does anybody really believe an NFL owner would take that kind of hit if it’s his own money on the line?  I don’t.  Somewhere, somehow, that penalty and lost revenue from playing in a band box will be more than made up.

Baseball pioneered franchise relocation in the 1950s.  Nowadays, professional sports’ teams aren’t fleeing old stadiums or “decaying” neighborhoods.  Instead, they’re chasing pots of gold in the form of seat licenses; luxury suites; sweetheart development and rent deals; television contracts.  The Dodgers leaving Brooklyn may have qualified as a tragedy; the Browns, Cardinals, Chargers, Colts, Rams and maybe Raiders packing up does not.  Fans who have their hearts broken long ago had fair warning.  It’s the nature of the beast, pro sports.