By Benji Garcia-Reyes
IG: @themedimexican
There are only 32 NFL Franchises in the world. San Diego did not grow to be the nation’s 8th largest city by not having professional sports teams. Los Angeles, the 2nd largest, now again has two more professional sports franchises. Whether you are a fan or not, know about football or not, it will impact San Diego negatively. Tourism, shopping, nightlife, dining, and breweries.
If you’re keeping count, that now makes three professional sports teams that have left San Diego. The Rockets, Clippers and now the Chargers. At one point, the Padres were going to leave too had it not been for then-McDonald’s-owner, Ray Croc. So there much to be said on how this city does not work well with franchises yet depends so much on them. For whatever reason, the Comic Convention, which is only one weekend a year, was more of a priority to keep over a year-long tourism magnet with the recurring possibility (had we gotten a new stadium) of hosting the super bowl. Arguably, the Chargers had a bigger revenue potential than the Comic-Con.
It’s been four times now in the modern sports era where professional sports teams left a city like the now Los Angeles Chargers left San Diego. Only the Baltimore Colts’ “overnight” move was more devastating. At the moment, only the city of St. Louis feels like San Diego does now, except they experienced a few Super Bowl seasons along with one magical hoisting of the Lombardi trophy in January of 2000. The Cleveland Browns, who now have a team, lost it back in 1995, but they got a farewell season and even memorable goodbye from players walking the field. San Diego did not.
It’s hard to explain to people who are not passionate about something, let alone passionate about sports. The Chargers were more than just a team to a lot of people. To some, it was a thing to do, listen to or watch on free Sundays—but to a lot of us, this WAS our life. Now it’s gone, and not far enough. To people who spent their entire lives planning around the season, we are all now just left with sadness, lack of answers, and nowhere to turn.
Not all fans are affected the same. Some folks are more attached to the entity or name, for instance, so to them, it does not matter where that team plays. And why should it if most of the time, they won’t be going to the games up there anyways? The fact is that some of the most hurt fans are those of us who scratched out pennies to get obstructed view seats just to absorb the unique and intoxicating atmosphere you could only get while being around OTHER SAN DIEGO fans.
San Diego was chosen as CNN’s top brewery towns, and tons of football game drinking, brewing and selling added to that. Even if not all fans are upset, a large percent will now opt to stay at home during games because they have no team to cheer for, and to avoid listening to other fans cheer on their teams or worse: people cheering on their former team. Some can only equate this feeling to that of bumping into your very happy “ex” after a fresh break-up.
The medical cannabis industry will also be affected because many fans are also patients with game day rituals, practices, and gatherings that involved medicating. These fans will perhaps only drop in occasionally, but nowhere near in their previous numbers or enthusiasm. It is probable that fans that use to medicate to enjoy games, will now do it to forget, get over, or cope with the loss of their previous sports rituals. Fortunately for them, San Diego still has the Padres—for now.
Fortunately, there’s always life. And we are lucky to be in California because most of us will be able to medicate through this, and perhaps use some of that now free energy and passion, for other interests, concepts, and projects that need love, passion, and loyalty. Maybe, in ten years or twenty years, you’ll be able to add “cures Franchise relocation depression symptoms” to a strain description.
