By: Jason Phillips
Over the past few weeks the NFL has gone through some pretty large changes. This started when three teams the St. Louis Rams, San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders files for relocation to the city of Los Angeles. The term NFL commissioner Roger Goodell put when describing the stadium situations of the three teams that applied for relocation. The San Diego Chargers are a franchise that acted completely opposite as the Rams did throughout this process.
The Chargers owner has been working and trying hard of the last few years to try and get the city to help them build a much needed new stadium. However, the city has been admit in they do not want to invest public money and resources into a NFL stadium that will on average only see about ten uses a year. Who can blame them really? Any time a new stadium is built it is a bad investment for the city that uses tax payer money to subsidize and help construct the project. That is why the Chargers hands were tied in this situation and really had no choice but to apply with the Raiders on a separate Carson City project that would require two franchises to move based on the cost. That is why over the second week of January the owners and league officials gathers to discuss and vote on the issue of the teams relocation. Many issues arose over the Carson City project and how much league money it would cost to build a stadium there. Also there was great apprehensive about the Raiders going back to LA. The team had a spell in the 80’s there before returning to Oakland. That’s why on January 12th the 30 out of 32 NFL owners voted in favor of the Inglewood project and the Rams relocation to LA. The St. Louis this was a devastating blow marking the second time the city has lost a NFL team (the Cardinals left in 1988). The Rams and the NFL are both able to rejoice in the fact that the team will be in the second largest TV market in the country. However the owners and the league decided to reject the Carson City project and the idea of the Raiders moving back to LA. Many people were concerned that it would not be wise to have three teams in one city despite it being a major market. Especially two teams that play in the same division creating a weird twice a year meeting between the two franchises. However, the owners seeing how difficult it would be to keep the Chargers in San Diego with city unwillingness to build a new stadium decided to give the franchise a year to decide if they want to join the Rams on the Inglewood project.
Although the Rams will be LA for the 2016 season the Chargers will have the option to play one last year in San Diego before deciding to move or not. Really this works out two ways. The Chargers decide to partner up with the Rams and move to LA for next year because of how discouraged they are by the city of San Diego, or they wait play a final goodbye year in San Diego and leave for the 2017 season. Either the Chargers will most likely wind up in LA. The Raiders are the real wild card team here and it will be interesting to see what unfolds in the coming years.
