I can remember as a young Ensign, newly assigned to USS Oriskany in San Diego, leaning over the rail and kibitzing with my Division Chief over the Chargers...an AFL team I had no interest in and believed was second fiddle to the big league of Packers and Giants and Rams.
But within the following 53 years the Bolts became my team...one that saw me through the lean years of Duck football, which I stopped following as a lost cause. The Chargers became my football fix and obsession for years of thick and thin results. During that half century, the Rams fled to St. Louis and the Raiders chucked Oakland for the Coliseum only to fail in retreat back to Zombieland.
Fans and stadiums do age as is the want of all things, but the passion of sports fanatics is as durable as the Sphinx...and as brainless. Reality is that the loyalty of fans is wasted stupidly even through years of unfailing support and providing the public subsidy that pro ownership requires to ensconce its team in a city.
The citizens of St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego...loyal fans all...are now disdained by the NFL for not having the largesse to fund stadiums demanded by the families who own the teams...a stick up that would make Dillinger blush.
The irony is the NFL's determination to move all these teams back into the same LA media center that all failed in before....at the expense of the present, faithful city fans who apparently did not or could not provide the corporate welfare demanded.
From where I sit, I could care less about the Chargers and Pro Football in general, which I stopped following with any but detached interest and replaced it with a passion for our Ducks, a connection with my past, my education and my memories.
The NFL is as bloodless and indifferent to its fans as any Wall Street banker to its depositors. And they are both too big to fail and rumble over the top of us implacably while producing a product of inevitable disappointment. The wonder is that we all subsidize it without nary a peep and rail about other things.
I'll take the college game anymore...although it's lost its virginity long ago to the same dollar driven mechanism I complain about. But at least it's ownership is tied to it's school, lest our Ducks migrate to Salem because Autzen isn't good enough.
But within the following 53 years the Bolts became my team...one that saw me through the lean years of Duck football, which I stopped following as a lost cause. The Chargers became my football fix and obsession for years of thick and thin results. During that half century, the Rams fled to St. Louis and the Raiders chucked Oakland for the Coliseum only to fail in retreat back to Zombieland.
Fans and stadiums do age as is the want of all things, but the passion of sports fanatics is as durable as the Sphinx...and as brainless. Reality is that the loyalty of fans is wasted stupidly even through years of unfailing support and providing the public subsidy that pro ownership requires to ensconce its team in a city.
The citizens of St. Louis, Oakland and San Diego...loyal fans all...are now disdained by the NFL for not having the largesse to fund stadiums demanded by the families who own the teams...a stick up that would make Dillinger blush.
The irony is the NFL's determination to move all these teams back into the same LA media center that all failed in before....at the expense of the present, faithful city fans who apparently did not or could not provide the corporate welfare demanded.
From where I sit, I could care less about the Chargers and Pro Football in general, which I stopped following with any but detached interest and replaced it with a passion for our Ducks, a connection with my past, my education and my memories.
The NFL is as bloodless and indifferent to its fans as any Wall Street banker to its depositors. And they are both too big to fail and rumble over the top of us implacably while producing a product of inevitable disappointment. The wonder is that we all subsidize it without nary a peep and rail about other things.
I'll take the college game anymore...although it's lost its virginity long ago to the same dollar driven mechanism I complain about. But at least it's ownership is tied to it's school, lest our Ducks migrate to Salem because Autzen isn't good enough.
