San Diego Raiders? Nope.

Everybody just calm down. The Raiders aren’t coming to San Diego. Just like the time the entire sports media claimed Philip Rivers stated unequivocally that he would never accompany the team to L.A. the facts have been twisted. When Mark Davis said he would be open to the Raiders coming to San Diego, he also basically said he’d be open to any and all options including, I presume, being the first NFL team on Mars. Not exactly a courtship of our fine city.

Now, there are a couple of reasons why the prospect would be intriguing, and they all center around spite. I’m sure Faulconer and the City of San Diego would love to prove to the Chargers and the NFL that they’re more than willing to build a facility for a team that actually wants to be here, and that would certainly undermine the idea the team or the league ever wanted to stay.  Which in turn would undermine the efforts of the league to make an example of San Diego as a town unwilling to do business with the NFL and therefore not being worthy of its presence. And that is one reason why the NFL would never allow it. San Diego’s greatest value to the NFL if the Chargers leave is as a cautionary tale.

And sure Mark Davis would love to come to San Diego and take a big bite out of that L.A. market. Everyone knows the City of Angels loves the Raiders more than the Chargers or even the Rams, who they didn’t so much as bother to wave to when they left all those years ago. But the NFL isn’t going to let that happen either. They’ll have traded the flea market that is San Diego for the Rodeo Drive of Los Angeles. They’re not going to reopen the flea market. If the Raiders don’t make it to L.A. they’re going to land in St. Louis or San Antonio or some other as yet unmentioned destination, but with two teams in L.A. Southern California will be full up for football.

So no, the Raiders aren’t coming to San Diego and neither is anybody else. Not for a long time, if ever.

Fire Everybody

Oh my. It's been a long time since this team has been 2-6. That's bad. There's no other conclusion you can reach when you look at a record like that. Yesterday, we gave up another close one in Baltimore and now I can officially say that I don't love 10:00AM games anymore. Is this how the San Diego Chargers end? Not with a bang, but with a whimper?

I'm done with good news and talk of miraculous turnarounds. While I don't think this team is that far away from contending, it ain't happening this year. We're not going to run the table and steal the AFC West title from a Denver Broncos team that just humiliated the Packers on national television. We can forget all that.

No, unfortunately, this team is just close enough to make a run in a year or two when they're ready to woo new fans in L.A. And not only will they field some new personnel-there's only so much you can do in an off season or two on that front-they'll likely try to load up on some real football people for once in their existence under the Spanos clan. Telesco and McCoy won't make it to L.A. Those guys aren't selling anything in a new market after what's become of this team in their short tenure. No, I'd expect that with their newfound revenue stream, the Spanoses will crack open their dusty checkbooks and make offers to the likes of John Gruden and Bill Cowher, knowing that while the Chargers might be a hard sell to L.A. fans those legendary coaches will garner some real interest. Heck, even Jimmy Johnson will probably get a call if all else fails.

I assume that's been the plan all along, it's only taken longer to get here than they originally anticipated. The team got good and that made it hard to move. I suspect that deep down that's why the organization really hated Marty. But AJ and Norv were never going to see the field in Los Angeles, and it looks like Tommy T and McCoy won't make it either. They might not survive the week. At this rate, they don't deserve to. Yesterday pounded the final nail into that coffin, or at least it should have.