The Chargers Now Have To Play Three Seasons In A Soccer Stadium

The $2.6 billion stadium being built to house the Los Angeles Rams and San Diego Los Angeles Chargers won’t be ready until 2020 because of record-setting rainfall in Southern California over the past year.

Instead of opening in 2019 as planned, both franchises will have to spend an extra year in someone else’s stadium. That means the Chargers will have to spend three seasons playing football in the 30,000-seat StubHub Center. I legitimately might die I’m laughing so hard.

So let’s break this down: the Chargers moved from San Diego to Los Angeles ostensibly because they couldn’t get the city to finance Dean Spanos’ dream monstrosity downtown. By moving to LA the franchise knew it wouldn’t get its own stadium, but would have to be a tenant in the one the Rams were building. Since the Chargers have virtually no Los Angeles-based fans, they knew they couldn’t play at the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum because both venues would be half-empty every week. So instead they bit the bullet and decided to play in a small venue for two seasons until the shiny new stadium they won’t own is ready. Now they’re going to have to play an additional season in that tiny soccer stadium…in a city where no one wants them.

This is all I have to say to the Spanos family right now:

This entire move by the Chargers has been so mismanaged it’s hard not to enjoy the schadenfreude. Absolutely no one in Los Angeles cares that the team moved there and absolutely everyone in San Diego is done with the franchise. The Spanos family now owns a team that is without a fanbase, a stadium or a true home. Nice work guys.

It couldn’t happen to a lovelier bunch of folks.