The next time the fans of the visiting team outnumber the fans of the home team in a game between the Raiders and Chargers, the home team may be in playing in the city the visiting team once called home.
Chargers owner Dean Spanos admitted on Sunday that he’s leaning toward exercising his right to move to Los Angeles.
Spanos initially made the comments to Scott Kaplan of CBS, and Spanos then elaborated after the game.
“I said I was not going to make up my mind until after the season,” Spanos said, via Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “[Kaplan] asked the question, ‘Are you closer to leaving than staying?’ I said, ‘That would probably be an accurate statement.’ I also said I’m not going to make up my mind until after the season. . . . Everything is in place. I’m waiting on the city of San Diego.”
As Spanos waits, time is running out. The deadline for doing a deal with the Rams to share space in Inglewood arrives on January 15.
Spanos is widely expected to move, due in large part to the absence of any viable plan to keep the team in town. A recent non-offer to give the Chargers a 99-year, $1 annual lease, supported by two City Council members who opposed the ballot measure that failed miserably last month, rubbed Spanos the wrong way.
So did the outcome of the vote, which managed a positive outcome of only 43 percent. On Sunday, Spanos acknowledged that, if the vote (which needed to get 66 percent to pass) had gotten at least 50 percent in the affirmative, Spanos “mostly likely, probably” would have felt differently.
At this point, the Chargers “most likely, probably” will be leaving, barring a miracle even bigger than anything that could be expected on Christmas, Festivus, or any other major holiday, real or made up.