Fun with Dean Spanos: A Liar’s Guide for Moving to LA

Late last night, 3 teams officially filed for relocation to Los Angeles: The Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and St. Louis Rams. All 3 have ties to LA, (some more than others), as they have played at least 1 year within the county limits. The lingering idea of moving to LA has been a longstanding threat by many teams throughout the years, but this is the furthest any have gone in quite some time. In an effort to save face with their existing local fan bases for the moment, all 3 teams have embarked on a friendly and/or mournful PR campaign, featuring statements and G&A sessions. Among them, the San Diego Chargers have released a video sit down with Chairman of the Board Dean Spanos as he vehemently lies about how we’ve gotten to this point. This is my response:

Question: Why have the Chargers filed for relocation, and why hasn’t it worked in San Diego?

Spanos: “I just want to say that this has been probably the single most difficult decision that I have ever made, and our family has ever made, in business.  I promise you, it wasn’t an easy decision to come to.”

“We’ve only been threatening to do this for the past 14 years. It was really tough to finally act on this bluff, but you gotta do what you gotta do to make more money and be universally hated by an entire region.”

“I’ve lived here 31 years of my life, and that is almost half of my life.”

I was told there would be no math!
/Counts on fingers
Doesn’t that mean you should be afraid of change by now?

“I have all my friends here, and a lot of great memories.”

“Friends of my money, I mean.”

“Not just with the football team, but with the rest of my life how it all played out here.  So it was very difficult to come to this decision.”

“Did I say it was a difficult decision yet? Oh.”

“It’s been 14 years that we’ve been working very hard to try and get something done here.”

“I’ve had to pay this weaselly lawyer for 14 years to stonewall you people. Can’t you take a hint?”

“We’ve had nine different proposals that we’ve made, and all of them were basically rejected by the city.”

“Basically.” Nice job of meandering over the facts and shifting the blame here, Dean. You’ll fit right in in LA, where they actually give out awards for acting!

“Over 25% of our business comes from Riverside County, Orange County and the Los Angeles County area.”

“So we’re going to move away from and lose most of our core 75% of customers to keep that 25%. It’s a solid business model!”

“Another team or teams going in there would have a huge impact on that.”

“You keep your filthy mustache away from my turf, Stan! You too, Bowl Cut! Southern California belongs to me!”

“I think that is what really was the catalyst that got this whole thing going because when the Rams decided to make their move there, this was a move to protect our business more than anything.  So we find ourselves where we do right now.”

Once again shifting the blame, Dean. “Don’t be mad at me, blame Kroenke for this! At least I tried to make this work!”

Question: How tough of a decision has this been for you?

You’ve got to be kidding me…

Spanos: “I’ve said all along, and I still say this; we have never wanted to leave.  Why would you want to leave San Diego?”

Great question, Dean! I’d really like to you actually answer that.

“It’s a great city with great people. And surely, this decision to file has nothing to do with the fans.”

“You peons had nothing to do with this, I promise. Please keep buying our gear and make the drive through 3+ hours of traffic to come see your team play.”

“They have been great and they’ve been supportive.”

Sure have. Nothing like seeing hordes of opposing fans flooding The Q on game day this year!

“It’s really been the inability of the city at the political level to get any kind of public funding or any kind of a vote to help subsidize a stadium.”

So then, what the hell is this? Oh right, it’s just not everything you wanted.

“This current process that’s proposed by the mayor, it runs past the time frames where you need to have an answer.”

Oh shit, I almost didn’t recognize you from the commercial!

“It really puts the burden on the team if you are not successful in having a positive vote.”

“And we can’t have that. This isn’t a democracy!” Jesus, Dean. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to move the team to DC with that kind of answer.

“It’s not because you didn’t try, but at the end of the day there may not be, and probably most likely would not be, an alternative for the team.”

“Falsely entertaining your serious proposals is technically a kind of trying…”

Question: What’s going to happen over the next coming weeks?

Spanos: “This week on Wednesday there are some more updates for the committees that we will be presenting to.  But the following week on the 12^th and 13^th of January, the owners will come together and come to some resolve.”

“There will be a lot of coming when you’re stuck in a room with Jerry Jones for 2 days, let me tell you.” Seriously though, I shouldn’t be knocking the old Double J. He’s actually the main proponent of blocking the Chargers move, and supposedly has enough votes from other owners to do so.

“There is no certainty on anything.  As I sit here, this is a very fluid situation.”

“You read all this stuff in the paper and everybody is tallying votes, but nobody knows anything for sure.”

“Least of all, me. I mean, come on, I want to move my team to a town that has failed 3 different franchises multiple times, and build it’s stadium on top of a toxic waste dump.”

“But as we’ve said all along, whatever the decision of the owners is, we will abide by.”

Of course. You seem like the kind of person that takes rarely not getting their way quite well.

Question: Can you take us through what you see some of the things could come out of these meetings?

Spanos: “It could be the Carson site is approved, it could be that the Inglewood site is approved and it could be that neither site is approved.  Those are the three possibilities.”

Question: If the Chargers are not going to move to Los Angeles, what happens here in San Diego moving forward?

You sell the team and the Chargers actually get an owner who is committed to not only staying in San Diego, but to improving the team’s accountability and on-field issues?!

Spanos: “We’ll be back here, and we’ll be here for the next year for sure. We’ll look at all the possibilities obviously with the city, and see what our alternatives could be.”