It sounds like the San Diego Chargers are inching ever-closer to being one of the NFL franchises to jump ship and make the move to Los Angeles, potentially as early as 2016.
The San Diego City Council will decide Tuesday whether to spend $2.1 million on plans for a new stadium for the Chargers, despite the fact that the team believes it would be a "gigantic waste of taxpayer time and money," according to Tony Perry of the Los Angeles Times.
The $2.1 million would fund an environmental impact study - something city leaders want completed in time for a public vote in Dec. or Jan. on a potential financing plan for a new venue - on a possible Qualcomm Stadium replacement in the hopes of swaying the Chargers and the NFL toward keeping the team in place.
"The Chargers will have no part in the city's misbegotten, doomed legal strategy," Mark Fabiani, the Chargers counsel on stadium matters, said. "And if the Chargers aren't participating, why are some politicians proposing to waste the taxpayers' money?"
Chargers owner Dean Spanos, of course, is involved in a joint stadium initiative with Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis in Carson, California. St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke has his own stadium initiative he is pursuing in Inglewood.
The NFL has been pushing the notion of a Los Angeles relocation very hard recently, with some suggesting that it could happen as quickly as 2016.
The Chargers, Raiders and Rams are all considered top relocation candidates and the NFL has been doing quite a bit of fact-finding both in terms of a Los Angeles market and the potentially vacated markets.
Per Perry, the league has a meeting planned in Chicago on August 11 to discuss potential relocation issues. San Diego city officials hope to speak with the league on August 10.
