Sorry Bill Plaschke, But Some Of Us Are Actually Excited About The Chargers Coming To LA

In case you haven’t heard the news, the San Diego Chargers have officially announced that they’ll be making the short trip north to become the Los Angeles Chargers next season.

That’s right. After decades of having a grand total of zero NFL teams, the City of Angels now has two, and some people are surprisingly not happy about that.

One of those people is LA Times sports columnist Bill Plaschke, who published an article this morning titled “Chargers shouldn’t look for a welcome wagon in L.A.” If that headline doesn’t already have you rolling your eyes, his argument will.

Bill’s story basically boils down to his belief that there’s nobody in LA who likes or cares about the Chargers, so they shouldn’t even bother to come here at all. His argument is literally this:

“I have still never met a single Chargers fan.”

That settles it. Bill Plaschke has never met a Chargers fan in LA, therefore they don’t exist. We can all go home now.

This is about as weak as an argument can get. In fact, I knew plenty of people growing up who rooted for the Chargers simply because they were the closest team to LA. Hell, even I liked them back when they had Drew Brees and LT.

He also argues the Raiders would have been a better fit since they have leftover fans from their previous stint in LA, and he’s not necessarily wrong. But he has to remember that the Raiders left in 1994 and the Rams left in 1995, meaning a lot of younger football fans like myself who were born in the 90s have absolutely no attachment to either of those teams.

Besides, those leftover fans he spends so much time talking about didn’t really help the Rams when it came to ticket sales last year.

Let’s be real here, Bill. We all know that popularity in LA comes down to winning, and the Chargers are already equipped to be the better team in that department next year.

While they may have had only one more win than the Rams in 2016, that’s pretty misleading when you remember the injuries they had to deal with. In the first three weeks alone they lost arguably their three best players for the season in Keenan Allen, Danny Woodhead, and Mati Te’o. The team will be much better when they’re at full strength next year.

And you want star power? The Chargers have young running back Melvin Gordon who had a breakout season with 10 touchdowns and rookie Joey Bosa was an absolute beast on defense with 10.5 sacks. Expect to see their jerseys popping up around LA these next couple of years.

Look, I’m not trying to say the Chargers will be great and sell out every game this season. But I also think it’s absolute nonsense for Plaschke to argue that nobody is going to care because they aren’t the Rams or Raiders.

I know Bill says he hasn’t met a single Chargers fan, but I guarantee that’s going to change when the team kicks off next year.