Until further notice, the big, splashy revelation of southern California's latest grab for an NFL team should be considered nothing more than leverage ... multiplied by two.
It's leverage that’s going to work, though — it always has. It's why the race to LA is now into its third decade, because the franchises that dangle the threat to move keep winning.
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Just as the Vikings stayed in Minnesota (and the Jaguars in Jacksonville; the Saints in New Orleans), the Chargers will settle back into San Diego and the Raiders in Oakland, with stadiums they can live with.
If there's any reason to believe it won't happen that way, it didn't come from Carson's official announcement of the city's plan to have the Chargers and Raiders share a stadium in its confines. At a Friday press conference about the stadium proposal, a few facts were sprinkled in among the proclamations from politicians and local business leaders.
The one fact worth remembering for now, though, is that nobody from the Chargers, Raiders or the NFL was present. There were no details about the plan first reported Thursday night in the Los Angeles Times and confirmed by the team, either, except for plans for what needed to happen next.
Yet nothing that does happen next will be more important than how the cities of San Diego and Oakland react not with words, but with actions.
The two teams, which share a division and are bitter rivals dating back to the birth of the AFL, are daring their home cities to call their bluffs. (Carson literally dared them Friday: Congresswoman Janice Hahn told the crowd, "If you can't work it out in your cities, we welcome you with open arms here in Carson.")
It may be working already in San Diego. City and team officials flung harsh words back and forth after word of the Carson plan got out, but Mark Fabiani, the team's special counsel and stadium point man, told Sporting News in an email that he has spoken to individual members of the stadium task force, and that owner Dean Spanos has offered to meet with Mayor Kevin Faulconer soon, "despite the Mayor’s intemperate remarks.''
Fabiani also took note of the "wall to wall support" Carson's leaders displayed Friday. There's little doubt he wanted San Diego officials to notice that.
With all of that, stadium roulette has again been reduced to stadium chicken. Deals have been surfacing in different spots around the area since both the Raiders and Rams left in 1995. Downtown, City of Industry, Chavez Ravine and Irwindale all have been suggested as stadium sites.
Now it's Inglewood's turn, teasing the Rams and St. Louis. The Carson developments meant coach Jeff Fisher had to answer questions about his team's future home, which, naturally, he couldn't reasonably answer.
"My focus, and of course this is coachspeak, is on this year and our football team in St. Louis," Fisher told reporters at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis on Friday. "And as things come up, nearly on a daily basis right now, they're going to continue to change, and whatever happens, happens."
St. Louis, of course, is scurrying to pull together a new stadium plan, just as San Diego and Oakland are. Carson's big chip is that its stadium will be privately financed. At the news conference, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs pointed out the plan to build the 49ers' new stadium without tax money. (He stopped short of saying no "public" money was spent there or would be spent in Carson, though.)
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Meanwhile, Fred MacFarlane, the spokesperson for the civic group behind the stadium, insisted that Carson's business community was behind it and was certain that the residents would support the ballot initiative needed for approval.
In reality, no tangible commitment was made, with the possible exception of the city official who wore a split Chargers-Raiders jersey when he spoke to the crowd.
But the threat is real enough to give San Diego and Oakland a dilemma.
Chargers fans took to Twitter to vow they'd never support the team if it moved north. Oakland has been backed against the wall two straight years, as the Raiders have signed back-to-back one-year lease extensions.
History says both cities will scratch up enough money — probably public money — to keep their teams.
Maybe they'll call the Chargers' and Raiders' bluffs. Seattle did that with the NBA's Sonics in 2008. They're now the Oklahoma City Thunder.
