I’m not gonna lie. When the Chargers moved to LA I was pretty bummed out. Partially for San Diego and their fans. But also partially because I expected the move to pan out anyway.

I’m a huge cynic and despite the obvious signs that the Chargers would have issues finding fans I still expected it to more or less be fine because the NFL, despite the problems, are still absolutely huge. LA has a metric fuck ton* of people in it, I figured they’d still find enough of a fanbase because life is cruel and people are stupid. But it’s turned out even worse than I anticipated. The Chargers may as well be homeless and play arena football because despite the fact that they are a fairly dominant 5-2 team, no one cares. No one.

The Chargers always faced an uphill battle to get media attention. Rivers has been criminally underrated his whole career. It took LdT and some deep playoff runs to get people invested and as soon as that vanished they dropped off the national map. It got worse when Spanos started to screw over the city. Then the loyal locals had to choose between getting boned by bullshit stadium taxes or keeping a major part of their sporting identity and the attendance got worse. Now they are in a city that isn’t even interested in an exciting Rams team (another thing I’m surprised about) fighting for any scrap of relevance and they won’t get it.

They were watched by 82 thousand people in London, but that number honestly doesn’t count towards anything. London games look crazy busy but it’s easier to stack a stadium when you are essentially putting on a novelty show and all the NFL fans in the area have to buy tickets because it’s the only game they’ll get.

I still say “San Diego” when referring to the Chargers. I accepted LA Rams pretty fast, but this still feels wrong. No one cares about this team. The stars toil away playing great football for a bunch of visiting fans and a small smattering of loyalists. It’s honestly depressing. I can’t imagine how rough it would be if the Chargers were bad. They can’t get even close to 27 thousand people to show up for them. I figured they’d find some successful business because it was being handled by businessmen and I don’t know a damn thing about business, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Now it seems clear the obvious arguments are all panning out. If they stay in LA they’ll always be second fiddle to a team the city has already struggled to embrace fully. They’ll always be that “other” team that gets ignored. They’ll never have their own identity.

If they don’t give SD their team back maybe the Chargers should move to London. Maybe then they’d get coverage and people would care about a team that deserves better. Maybe though, we should just continue to shun the team and make it clear they don’t belong in LA. Sacrifice a few years in complete and utter irrelevance just to make it clear to the NFL that Spanos should get kicked out and the team should go back to where it belongs.

TONS conversion rankings:
Ton
10 Tons = 1 Butt Ton
10 Butt tons = 1 Shit Ton
10 Shit Tons = 1 Fuck Ton