[Elvis]

[kayfabe]

Thanks everybody for the welcome. For the record, I was there and worked every Ram home game in Anaheim Stadium from 1980 to 1983,
selling popcorn, cokes, programs, and every kind of souvenir you can think of (so I just missed out on Ron Jessie and Larry McCutcheon).
Good money there. And I still have a Ram tam (ugh) packed away somewhere -- in sparkling blue and yellow -- and maybe even a pennant or
two I stole. Saw a lot of Wendell Tyler and Nolan Cromwell, Pat Haden and (I think) Dan Pastorini. Maybe they'll even come back (temporarily)
to Anaheim Stadium again, who knows?

[Hacksaw]

So if I get it all straight we have the following

Chargers don't think they have time to work with the public.
St Louis doesn't think they have to work with the public.
And the Raiders are trying to work with the public.

Ha ha. that sounds about right.

[OldSchool]

So if I get it all straight we have the following

Chargers don't think they have time to work with the public.
St Louis doesn't think they have to work with the public.
And the Raiders are trying to work with the public.

Ha ha. that sounds about right.

It's also funny that the St Louis crowd congratulates Spanos for his "efforts to work with San Diego" but in reality he keeps doing what he's done for 15 years and turns his back on their efforts and say they're not enough.

[Elvis]

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow ... story.html

Chargers seem to hold little hope for San Diego stadium solution

By SAM FARMER

In another indication of the impasse between the Chargers and the city of San Diego, the club released a statement Tuesday saying it does not believe a stadium initiative can be put on the ballot this year.

That means the Chargers hold little hope of staying in San Diego, at least according to the NFL's current timeline, and will continue to jointly pursue a Carson stadium with the Oakland Raiders.

The Chargers said they have had three formal meetings with the city -- the third taking place Tuesday -- and numerous informal conversations, but could not find a way to create a stadium ballot measure for December that complied with the California Environmental Quality Act and met election law requirements.

Said Mark Fabiani, Chargers special counsel: "The various options that we have explored with the city’s experts all lead to the same result: significant time-consuming litigation founded on multiple legal challenges, followed by a high risk of eventual defeat in the courts."

Time is of the essence for the Chargers because St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke intends to begin construction in December on a competing stadium project in Inglewood. The NFL is not going to give the go-ahead on two L.A.-area stadiums, so the Chargers don't have the luxury of waiting around for a years-long approval process that might never come to be.

“It appears the Chargers have pulled the plug on San Diego even though the city and county have gone out of their way to try and accommodate the team,” said Tony Manolatos, spokesman for the mayor’s stadium task force. “Instead of working collaboratively on a solution, the Chargers have thrown up one road block after another.”

The NFL wants an answer in the coming months about which team or teams will get the green light to relocate to L.A. with the intent of beginning play there in 2016. The Chargers, who play in outdated Qualcomm Stadium, have been looking for a San Diego solution for more than a dozen years.

"The Chargers are committed to maintaining an open line of communication with the city's negotiators as we move through the summer and leading up to the special August meeting of National Football League owners," Fabiani said. "That meeting may provide important information about what is likely to occur during the remainder of 2015."

A joint statement by Mayor Kevin Faulconer, county Supervisor Ron Roberts, and City Atty. Jan Goldsmith said, “We are still at the table. We have all the ingredients for success in San Diegoi if the Chargers work with us. We can get this done if the Chargers want to get it done.”

Staff writer Tony Perry contributed to this report.

[Hacksaw]

So if I get it all straight we have the following

Chargers don't think they have time to work with the public.
St Louis doesn't think they have to work with the public.
And the Raiders are trying to work with the public.

Ha ha. that sounds about right.

It's also funny that the St Louis crowd congratulates Spanos for his "efforts to work with San Diego" but in reality he keeps doing what he's done for 15 years and turns his back on their efforts and say they're not enough.

Of course. It is probably their only hope to keep the StL Rams. It looks like riverfront is going to flounder the way it's going back there. Carson is their only real hope.

Spanos is loved for not working with SD and Stan is hated for not working with StL. Now that's funny too.
It looks like SD is closer then in years due to the leverage Carson is providing. Nice how they are spinning it so the owners will have that to chew on Aug 11.
They should stick it out and get it done in SD per Spanos' stated (alleged) preference then if it is a failure move with Stan in per the back up deal they might already have. No leverage lost, just the chance to drive the car.

LA Chargers < LA Rams

[Elvis]

[Elvis]

So i guess the questions are:

Are the Chargers determined to move? Farmer and Vinny seem to think so.

Are they trying to stop Kroenke from coming in '16 and playing for another year to work out a deal in SD as Acee and (sometimes) Roggin are saying?

Or is it still just a hard leverage play for right now where they end up taking a deal in SD?

Let's not rule out a combination of the above, or none of the above.

And of course there's this question: Does SD have any power over what Kroenke does? They're getting all of the attention but do they have any real power?

[BuiltRamTough]

I still think the Chargers will get a new stadium in 2016 and stay in SD. Call me naive...

[kayfabe]

Agree with Elvis, this is just Liar's Poker on SD's part, what hand does SD really have?

It seems the only thing they really have right now is an owner in Spanos who's more
popular than ESK among NFL owners, but whose name is mud in their own town. Thus
Spanos has to rig everything towards his strength...and really the Spanos' only strength...
the owners themselves. So today the Chargers accomplish that by making the August owners
meeting more important by getting rid of the December/March voting carrot altogether
(even if they just did so via some really circular logic). And then issue some
self-fulfilling prophecies like this one --

...Fabiani said. "That meeting may provide important information about what is likely to
occur during the remainder of 2015."

Yeah I'll bet. Especially since you just lasered the focus on it by taking away the
only other alternative -- the SD ballot initiative -- earlier today.

So make the owners meeting the key, check. Set up a them-or-me scenario among owners
between Spanos and Kroenke ASAP. Check. Leverage Spanos' (and perhaps, Policy's)
popularity among owners to hopefully pressure the NFL to side with whatever San Diego
decides...even though it's not even really apparent what the Chargers themselves want.
Check. Try to get the NFL to show their hand ASAP so that the Chargers can counter and
figure out what leverage they have. Check.

But it's not gonna work, precisely because Kroenke's not playing Liar's Poker and so
as Elvis implies (I think), SD really doesn't have any power over a guy who's already
shown his hand...unless they can get other owners to rabble rabble rabble the NFL with
pitchforks and torches. But the danger here I think is that the NFL can turn right
around and point to what the Chargers DON'T have: a real plan of their own.

In the Chargers defense there's really not much to lose here, because that town really
loves their team -- as Acee well knows -- think Seattle or Green Bay as places that
are as provincial and would be absolutely crushed if the team went away. Plus down
deep I think the NFL knows this and doesn't want them to move away from SD either.
Which is why I think Acee's right: trash/stall Kroenke for now by using a bit of Kabuki theater,
trash the city council, get the NFL to commit to something, and then in come back in
a year to grovelling SD legislators by using the leverage of a Carson move to get a real
sweetheart deal in San Diego, that's the Charger endgame to maximize their money grab.

But if I'm Kroenke now I think I call the Chargers' bluff a little here. Even maybe
tweak them a little bit at the upcoming owner's meeting. Like...where's your hand?
And how exactly do you plan to stop me (Kroenke) from moving to LA again? I think
the other owners smell money too, that's all, so give them all their relocation fee (FIFA
light), maybe even give San Diego and Oakland a little bigger slice of the relocation
pie to shut them up, and voila, Kroenke's got his votes. But then there goes
the Chargers' leverage...and with it a bunch of money for Spanos.

I guess then like BuiltRamTough I'm naive too, don't think the Chargers are going
anywhere. The problem is that Kroenke's moves and the immediacy of his actions
are taking away a lot of SD's own leverage (i.e., money)...but I'm not sure anybody's
buying the Chargers' actions. Including the SD public (only 32% of whom agreed in
a recent U-T newspaper poll with the Chargers moves in all of this), and the SD
city council -- who despite Mark Fabiani at every turn trying to do his darndest to
paint them as backward buffoons -- still enjoy a higher rating than the Chargers.
And who still can take the high road today by issuing “We are still at the table. We have
all the ingredients for success in San Diego if the Chargers work with us" statements.

So memo to the Chargers -- If everybody knows you're playing Liar's Poker, um, the game just doesn't work.