Diehard Chargers fans travel to owners meeting in effort to save their team
SCHAUMBURG, Ill. — Two San Diego Chargers fans are in the midst of a strange, emotional road trip this week.
Johnny Abundez and Carlos Mora, both lifelong Chargers fans who hadn’t seen each other for years outside social media, decided long ago they’d meet up to make the trip to see fan favorite Junior Seau be inducted in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio last weekend. Then when they heard the NFL’s owners were meeting the following Tuesday in Chicago — a quick seven-hour jaunt — they had to change their plans make an appearance there, too.
Why? Because the Chargers have a tenuous future in San Diego and are in strong consideration to be relocated to Los Angeles as soon as the 2016 season. That’s what the owners were in town to discuss. Abudez and Mora wanted the league to know they will do their little part — whatever they can to have their voice heard and help keep their team where they believe it belongs.
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“We all love our teams, but for us, it’s more than that,” Abudez told Shutdown Corner. “That’s why we’re here.”
They held up “Save Our Bolts” signs, outnumbered by scores of St. Louis Rams fans who made the shorter trip up I-55 to picket for their team, but Abudez and Mora remained undaunted. To them, the fact that there were only two of them outside the Hyatt Regency while billionaire owners met inside (and may not have seen them) is immaterial.
“We are being heard,” said Abudez, a proud member of SaveOurBolts.org. “We do a lot of community service. We have made a lot of contacts with different groups and different fans around the country. Even Raiders fans; they’re fighting with us.
“We’re not billionaires. We’re blue-collar individuals who spend a lot of money on season tickets, parking, all that. We’re still loyal until the end. They say they want us to be loyal, and we’re not always feeling the loyalty back. They see us as coins, not dollars.”
And Abundez and Mora have spent a lot of their cents and dollars to hit the road for their Chargers. First, it has been making the rounds as the Chargers, the city of San Diego, league officials and other politicians meet at different venues with the future of the franchise hanging in the balance.
“We met with [San Diego] mayor [Kevin] Faulconer, members of city council, Chargers fans, we’ve talked to fans from other 31 teams, we were at the Carson town hall meetings,” Abundez said. “There were no more than 13 fans out there, but we went. We went because we felt we had to.”
They also felt they had to watch Seau’s induction, even tailgating with most of the Seau family in Canton, and yet — in typical Chargers fashion — there was a veil of awkwardness to the whole weekend, with the Hall initially not letting Seau’s family speak on his behalf before allowing his daughter, Sydney, deliver a memorable speech and interview to honor her late father.
“You know what? Sydney did an awesome job,” Abundez said. “The New York Times did an awesome job bringing [the speech she wanted to give] to light. If it wasn’t for that and the campaign that we had — we started calling the Pro Football Hall of Fame, emailing them, everything — I don’t know that Junior’s passion, his talent, his legacy … it might not have been honored properly.”
And then it was onto Chicago, where Abundez and Mora made the drive for a day of standing in the heat and holding up signs, staying with friends (Chicago Bears fans who offered their support) to save a few bucks after what has become quite an expensive campaign. Inside the hotel, there would be some good news: NFL executive vice president did say that the Chargers have made a “significant amount of progress” in keeping the team in San Diego, compounding the earlier news that the city has proposed up a joint-financing plan to hold onto the Chargers for a possible stadium in Mission Valley.
Abundez is cautiously optimistic. In his experience these past few years, pounding the pavement and getting daily and weekly updates on the progress (or lack thereof), Abundez isn’t about to celebrate over a few kernels of promise. Especially when team owner Dean Spanos has gone silent of late.
“Right now, with everything going on, “ he said, “this government that’s there with Mayor Faulconer, the city attorney, the county supervisor, plus the city council … they were saying that the No. 1 choice was San Diego up until a few months ago. It seems like every time San Diego came up with something good, they came out with negativity. The NFL bylaw says, pretty much, they have to try to work something out with the local city.
“I’m still concerned … very.”
Will two Chargers fans make a difference? No, not likely. But Abundez is willing to carry the torch for thousands of others who support the Chargers and do the heavy lifting they cannot. In a way, he figures it’s his duty.
Now the awkward question: If the team was to make the move two hours up the coast, would Abundez still support the team and go to the games?
“I’m a Charger fan for life,” he said. “I’ll always support the team. But will I go to L.A. every other weekend? I’m not sure I will, and I’m not sure my friends will either. I think I’d rather go to the road games and hang out with the fans of other teams. I’ve met so many of them on the road, and they have our backs.
“But the team … I’m not sure.”
The beat goes on for Los Angeles, and sometime in the next four or five months we’ll get a good idea if the Chargers-Raiders tandem in Carson or the Rams-Inglewood project are the most likely L.A. story. To that end, Abundez still wonders why the league wants to go there in the first place.
“The reason the NFL left Los Angeles 20 years ago was basically greed, and it’s the same now,” he said. “So they’re going to go back and make something work that didn’t work … over more greed? Why, because the Clippers sold for a way-above-average price?
“That makes no sense to me. Who in L.A. is doing what we are doing, fighting for a team? I don’t see anyone. The fans are the ones that are going to suffer over this if they leave. We’ve already seen what the TV revenue sharing is, that you could basically just have a speaker out there and have fans cheering if that’s what you want.”
“The fans give their heart and soul. And yet we’re most likely to lose. That’s sad to me.”
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
