The San Diego Chargers are likely to pack up the moving vans and make their way to Los Angeles in due time, but the city of San Diego is making sure the team’s last days in San Diego are just about as miserable as they can possibly be for Chargers owner Dean Spanos. Not only did the city’s residents vote against a stadium measure that would have had the city do the heavy lifting for the NFL franchise to build a new stadium, but now city council members are having some fun at the expense of Spanos.
Two city council members put together an idea to offer the Chargers a 99-year lease on grounds for a new football stadium at the cost of $1 per year. The idea would be that if the Chargers accepted the insanely low rent offer, the Chargers would also be on the hook for operating and maintaining the stadium. Why do that when you can pay a higher rent and have the city take care of the maintenance of the stadium?
The offer was never handed directly to the Chargers, however, and was instead relayed through the media. According to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, Spanos has not taken kindly to this sequence of events (which was probably the point anyway).
“If the goal was to infuriate the single remaining decision-maker in this process, mission accomplished,” a source told Pro Football Talk.
Bravo, San Diego. Bravo.
You see, many NFL and sports owners have been holding cities at hostage for long enough, and here we have San Diego standing up as one and saying enough is enough. It’s about time we see a city tell a greedy sports owner they are not going to be suckered into a stadium deal just because you may want to play in another city anyway.
Keep trolling, San Diego.
