Each time it happened was more heartbreaking than the last, and it happened all day long. Everything great the Raiders did, the fans roared even louder, like a good home crowd should … except it was in the other team’s building. Right to the end, as the Raiders overtook the home team in the final minutes, then knelt down to run out the clock and seal the 19-16 victory.
That’s how the Chargers’ 56-year run in San Diego is going to end, apparently. The fans of their most bitter rivals drowning them out. Their own fans sending a message of their own to the franchise they loved, and that’s now abandoning them, with their absence.
Who can blame San Diego fans? Is it even proper to call them Chargers fans anymore, in fact?
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That’s not a knock against them if they shun that. They love the players, they love the history, they love the memories. But that bunch that’s hijacking them out of town … nope. And in the coldest of terms, they are the San Diego Chargers. For now.
There’s no saving the team anymore, no 11th-hour deal to keep them in the city that welcomed them in their second season, the AFL’s second season, in 1961. No keeping them from their original home, Los Angeles, where destiny has been pulling them back for years.
This was the fans’ last stand, and they took it sitting down, in their homes, or at the beach, or in the park, or wherever San Diegans enjoy the Sunday before Christmas. Not around franchise and edifices that made them feel betrayed.
Sunday began bad for the last of the Chargers faithful, and only got worse. CBS Sports reported people close to owner Dean Spanos saying he had “no choice” but to move to L.A., and that “there aren’t any miracles here.’’
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Translation: there are no more ways to extort them that they might fall for this time.
As the eventual loss to the Raiders unfolded, along came this report from the Los Angeles Daily News:
FYI: According to multiple sources #Chargers considering rebranding if they move to L.A.
— Vincent Bonsignore (@DailyNewsVinny) December 18, 2016
That’s what you call a clean break. The Chargers’ legacy would be left in San Diego. That’s all they’ll have, too, because the only way another NFL team comes in is for some rich benefactor to give them a stadium the way Stan Kroenke gave L.A. one … for two teams to play in.
It’s hard to imagine it happening the other way around, for San Diego to give one to some rich guy, the way Las Vegas is ready to give one to the Raiders.
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The voters/taxpayers made that call already. No, they said to the Spanos family, you’ve jerked us around enough. Give you a break? Give us a break.
On Sunday, they voted in a different way. They made their feelings loud and clear, through the cheers of the out-of-town fans who took their seats. We’ve wasted enough money, time, emotion and energy on you, they told the Chargers.
Any other time a rival fan base takes over a stadium, it’s something to be embarrassed about. There’s no shame in this, though. There’s just a lot of sadness. It’s been said about too many other cities over the years, not just in the NFL, but plenty in this league anyway. Baltimore, Cleveland, Houston, St. Louis twice … and, barring a miracle, Oakland for a second time, the irony of the whole day in San Diego.
Those fans deserve better.
It couldn’t have been fun for the Chargers players and coaches Sunday; the season has been hard enough for them, and Philip Rivers is part of the landscape there.
It won’t be fun in the season finale, either, against the Chiefs, the likely last game in the city for the franchise that won its only major pro sports championship.
Chiefs fans probably won’t pack the stands like Raiders fans did. So Chargers fans, as painful as it will be for them, have a chance to give the team that’s rushing out of town the appropriate farewell.
Silence.