A Letter from the Editor
I would like to send two very urgent warnings to all my friends and fellow Chargers fans back in San Diego.
First: If you are driving down the road and notice your favorite Charger driving beside you, watch out! He is probably drunk or high as shit!
The arrest this week of Jamal Williams on drunk-driving charges is just the latest is a long line of alcohol- and drug- related arrests for the team, so if that hasn’t been enough to convince you that the Chargers are one of the most fucked-up party teams in the league, let me add some personal insight.
I spent a lot of time in San Diego and I got pretty close to some Chargers and was very close with some people who were very close with them. Here’s what I can tell you: The linebackers party HARD, with cocaine and vodka near the top of their menu. The offensive linemen are a bunch of beer-swilling alcoholics. I could tell you exactly where to find a couple of Bolts linemen right now, right down to the exact barstool. The wide receivers are fucking drunks. The secondary is by all appearances a group of upstanding guys, the only problem being they suck at football. As for the Holy Trinity, Rivers and LT are squeaky-clean and Gates, while he does hit the town with the fellas, seems to keep himself under control.
One of the funniest things to come out of the Jamal Williams DUI story is that he had apparently chosen not to utilize a special program set up by the Chargers to provide players with safe rides home.
This program was founded by former Charger Lorenzo Neal, and was called Safe Ride Solutions. The funny thing is the city of San Diego already had such a program, called Call a Fucking Cab.
Call a Fucking Cab actually was a network of several smaller programs, and most were open to all San Diegans, Chargers included.
If you were drunk on the town, had a few extra bucks and wanted to get home, you could just Call a Fucking Cab.
It’s really funny that Neal was the one who decided Call a Fucking Cab was insufficient, then started his own program. On three separate occasions in San Diego, I jumped into a cab wearing Chargers gear only to have the cabbie go out of his way to tell me what a degenerate drunk Lorenzo Neal was.
Okay, so now that you’re good and pissed at the Chargers, let me deliver my second warning: The Chargers are leaving town.
Now a lot of people are saying “they might leave town,” or “I hope they don’t leave town,” or “what will we do if they leave town,” or “I don’t even want to think about them leaving town.”
We’re not fucking with any of that. We’re telling you: The Chargers are leaving town.
They will play their 2011 season representing the City of Industry, east of Los Angeles. Now I know this is an emotional issue for everyone, including me. Even though I’m in LA at the moment, I want the Bolts to stay exactly where they are, in Mission Valley, in the heart of San Diego.
So I’m just gonna lay these facts out there bullet-style, cold-blooded. There’s no other way to get bad news.
• The Chargers need a new stadium.
Yeah, the new one is perfectly functional for the game and for the average fan, but this isn’t about football. It’s about money. Chargers executives look at the potential revenue streams a new stadium could open (seat licenses, luxury boxes, marketing partnerships, etc.) and they get sweaty in the private area. The NFL has already declared that the current stadium will never host another Super Bowl, which is really a kiss of death for the building, especially considering that San Diego is otherwise a first-class host city. The Chargers rent the building from the city, and have been involved in several lawsuits over said rent. Have you ever been in a dispute with a landlord? Did you find yourself thinking, “I hope we can work this out?” No. You thought, “I can’t wait to get out of here so I can come back and throw a brick through the window.”
• The Chargers’ “last option” in San Diego is not an option.
So after spending tens of millions of dollars trying to work out a new stadium site in San Diego County and being rebuffed by the city of SD and Oceanside, the Chargers have declared Chula Vista their “last option.” Only problem is, Chula Vista is not interested. The mayor of Chula just blasted the team with some weird news release that didn’t make much sense other than reiterating her long-held opposition to hosting the team. But hey, big deal right — it’s just the mayor. The real problem is the city ALREADY HAS PLANS for the site the Chargers are looking at. The retail-entertainment development that was scheduled to inhabit the bay-front site the Chargers want is hitting its own snags in these rough times, but it should work out and it would bring a lot more dough to the city than the Chargers would (because the Chargers would keep most stadium profits and leave the city to deal with the headaches).
• The Chargers can no longer afford to build their own stadium.
When the Chargers first approached the city about a new stadium a few years ago, the deal they offered was, “You give us the land, and we’ll build the stadium.” The city said no, and in the ensuing years, escalating costs of building materials have driven the estimated cost of a new stadium from $500 million to $1 billion. When those estimates started shooting up, the Chargers went looking for financing partners to help shoulder the costs. They couldn’t find any.
• Ed Roski has the land, the money and the design for a new stadium in his pocket.
Ed Roski is a part owner of Staples Center, the LA Kings and the LA Lakers. Ever heard of them?
He also owns this big patch of land out in the City of Industry, an overlooked little burgh east of LA. He has finished architectural designs for a football stadium at the site. He has completed the environmental impact report, which is the single biggest hurdle to any major development. He has the $1 billion to build a new stadium in his pocket.
No looking for financing help, no leveraging, no bullshit. The money is in his pocket.
Roski has indicated that he will not put a team in the site unless he is a part-owner. The Spanos family, which currently owns the team, has shown no interest in selling any part of it, but we’re sure a man with pockets as deep as Roski’s could work something out with them. Especially considering that Roski and the Spanos’s are close personal friends. Oh, had I forgotten to mention that? Yeah. Close personal friends.
• The Chargers can get out of their lease in 2011 for a relatively low sum.
The Chargers lease with San Diego allows them to leave whenever they goddamn well please, but they’ll have to pay a penalty. This year, it’s about $56 million. Next year, about $54 and a half mil. The year after that, in 2011, it drops to about $26 million.
• The Chargers just hired an LA marketing firm.
And there’s a lot of fucking people to market to up here.
Sorry for the colossal Friday bum-out. Fuck it. Go Lakers.
Signed,
Travis Lee Hunter
Editor and Publisher
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