Quote:Is that the case? I know nothing about the feelings of the residents of San Diego - but it seems that in most places the politicians will put their future in jeopardy if they do support public financing. Especially in California - which supposedly is deep in debt.

San Diego's a different animal from the rest of California. It's an extremely red county in a state full of blue, and politics work a little differently there as a result. Granted, my thoughts are based on a straw poll of people I knew in San Diego, and marginally more scientific "man on the street" polls done by local news while I was there. It's also worth noting that I left SD roughly five years ago, so things may have changed, but there were two key problems:

 

1. Lack of willingness by politicians to even entertain the idea of public funding, for fear that costs would balloon or the project would go sideways, even though many in San Diego favored some form of assistance to the Chargers on building a new stadium.

 

2. Stadium plans that ranged from impractical (knocking down a power substation in Chula Vista) to idiotic (filling in part of San Diego Bay to build a stadium on an artificial island--not even kidding).

 

Unlike situations in St. Louis or, in the more distant past, Los Angeles itself where there was fairly rampant apathy about the fate of the local team(s), San Diegans are die-hard Charger fans, and have been vocal in their desire for the city and the team to figure something out for over a decade.

 

Quote:No they wouldn't. If the NFL said the chosen team must stay put until a stadium in completed, all three teams would be waiting until 2018.

And the TV network executives would fight amongst themselves to determine who would be first in line to hit Roger Goodell with a baseball bat that had an ebola-tainted railroad spike driven through it.

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