After rumours swirled around for the better part of five years, the San Diego Chargers are relocating to Los Angeles and becoming the Los Angeles Chargers in the upcoming National Football League season.
The team officially announced their decision to move this morning and posted a news release on their site stating as much. As for their new home, the Chargers will be playing at the StubHub Center, home to the Los Angeles Galaxy, for the foreseeable future.
No surprised with the announcement
Rumours had been surrounding the Chargers for a long time now about the desires of the owner, Dean Spanos, to move the team to Los Angeles and try to tap into the larger consumer market there. The Chargers fans did not want their team to move but once the opportunity presented itself, Spanos wasted no time in making the decision to move and using a new logo for the "new" team.
In a letter posted on the team's Twitter account by Spanos, the owner spoke of how San Diego would "always be part of the team's identity and that he had nothing but gratitude and appreciation" for the support the fans had given the team for 56 years. Spanos also stated that he felt that Los Angeles was a "remarkable place" and that the team needed to get "back to winning ways" in order to capture the hearts of the fans in LA.
The Chargers face an uphill battle in LA
As the Los Angeles Rams have discovered, unless you are winning, the people of Los Angeles will not show up to your games. The Chargers have seen this and will now have to prove that they are the team that the city should get behind. The Chargers have a lot of work to do both on and off the field. On the football side of things, the team does not have a head coach as of right now but speculation points to former Buffalo Bills offensive coordinator and temporary head coach, Anthony Lynn. The Chargers also have gaps on both sides of the ball that will need to be filled with free agency and in the draft if they want to make the playoffs in the 2017 season.
Off the field, in such a saturated market, the first step to getting attention for the Chargers is to win as many games as possible. The team has to battle the Rams within the same sport and then try to keep fans coming once the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Kings, Los Angeles Dodgers and the Galaxy during most of their season. That is a tall order but if the Chargers learn from the Rams' mistakes, they will put themselves in a good position to become LA's football team.