Patience Runs Out

Here in San Diego "THE STORY" over the last few days has been all about the Chargers.  Their investigations of moving to L.A. (well...Carson, but that's sorta L.A.) have exploded the social media and the local radio stations and fish wraps.  There are a couple of good articles in the UT that describe the situation pretty well.  You can read them here and here.  

I'll leave the technical analysis to others but as a native San Diegan who has lived here most of my life, I do have some history and have formed some opinions.  I know...surprise, right?  Anyway, several things come to mind when thinking about this issue:

• San Diego government (City Council, Mayor, Port Commission, etc, etc) are notoriously inept and lack vision.  The new Mayor seems to be cut from different cloth, but even he hasn't approached this issue with honesty and urgency.
• San Diego is a small market.  Not only is it a small market, the city government is filled with small thinkers.  Add to this fact that the new way to conduct business in the NFL is by selling Personal Seat Licenses, and things look bleaker for the team to stay in San Diego.
• The Chargers have been working for 14 years and have been involved in 9 different proposals to build stadiums all over the county.  So far...bupkis.  Nada.  
• Qualcomm stadium is an antique.  It needs to go.  The team cannot be competitive playing in this venue.
• The population of San Diego, while generally liking the Chargers, doesn't seem to be willing to spend money (in the form of taxpayer subsidies to build a stadium) to keep them.  They generally have little vision and less appreciation of the economic impacts of having an NFL team and all the events capable in a new, modern facility.  
• The good news is that the deal in Carson between the unholy alliance between the Chargers and the HATED Raiders, is still in embryonic stage.  It can fall apart.  A wild card is the guy from St Louis building a stadium down the road in Inglewood.  LA won't have 3 teams.  Another wild card is that the NFL owners have to approve anything that is done.  

So it's not, by a long shot, over.  But the city and/or county have to get off their ass to make something happen.  The problem is that, based on history, I'm pretty pessimistic that anything can be done or there is will to do it.