Recipe for a Do-Over: Five Steps to Fix the Chargers Mess
A simple blueprint for an NFL franchise reboot
Dearest Spanos Family, owners of the (Formerly Super-)Chargers —
What happened last week? That can’t have gone as planned, right?
In a newscycle that included an unprecedented political drama involving British spies, Kremlin kompromat, lurid sex acts with prostitutes and fears of deep Russian entanglement with our PEOTUS, somehow you guys and your 58-year old football franchise managed to come out looking the worst of anyone in the week’s headlines. You guys even had to retract a logo. The last time a trip to Los Angeles went this bad so quickly, John McLane was jumping off of Nakatomi Plaza. But at least he had a firehose as a harness.
First things first: it’s not like Chargers fans were as legendary as Green Bay cheeseheads or the Terrible Towel wavers of Pittsburgh, but they were still a very respectable contingent who stuck by your team through more down seasons than ups. And you stared them in the eye and quoted Ron Burgundy, only you don’t have a teleprompter to blame.
When Stan Kroenke picked up and moved the Rams to Los Angeles last year, we all saw it coming. The Rams and St. Louis had effectively been separated for some time, living together but sleeping in separate bedrooms. (Fun Fact: You could actually have fit the entire attendance of some of those final St. Louis Rams games in a couple of small bedrooms.) Kroenke was already dating his soon-to-be wife, he even bought a big plot of land out in an up-and-coming L.A. neighborhood to build his dream house with her.
Meanwhile, after flirting with a couple girls in L.A. yourself, you did the right thing and said you were going to try and work things out at home. But behind the scenes, while claiming you were working things out, you were planning your escape the whole time.
So, after she refused to meet a fairly onerous and seemingly unnecessary set of demands, you mic dropped your better half of 58 years on Instagram to tell her that, instead of building your dream house together, you’re going to spend roughly the same amount of money to move to L.A. and rent a guest house (at the dream home your recently-divorced buddy Stan just built with his new girl).
It’s safe to say that very few Chargers fans will be visiting after you move your stuff up the 5 and 405 to your Carson crash pad, and eventually that spot on the Rams’ really expensive couch in Inglewood. Which means you guys now have the unenviable task of building a new fanbase from the ground up. In one of the most notoriously indifferent cities in the world.
It’s daunting, but it’s not impossible. You made a series of costly missteps, but fortunately they all stemmed from the same failing: you disregarded virtually every person that matters in this equation. Here’s how you fix things with all of the relevant constituencies:
Get Your Backstory Right
A proper farewell for San Diego
Let’s face it, that ended incredibly poorly. And now you need to convince a new group of fans to give you a chance? This is not a good look.
You have to start by fixing the situation with San Diego, at least as much as is possible retroactively. You should start by making a sizable donation to youth sports in San Diego (in Junior Seau, Lance Allworth, and other legendary Chargers’ names).
More importantly, when you announce that gesture, you need to go above and beyond with one final gift: let the city and people of San Diego keep the Chargers name (Boltman and all). It’s theirs, not yours. And let’s face it, after this week’s mess, it’s so tainted that you are going to want to start fresh anyways.
Real talk: most of San Diego will still hate you, but you’ll be doing the right thing in helping them to move on and not have to watch their team playing in another city on Sundays.
Get Your Brand Right
New city, new name, new look
The turnaround time is too tight for you to put a whole new team name, uniforms, et al in place for the 2017 season; so much as the Oilers had to relocate and play as the Tennessee Oilers for two seasons, because you didn’t have your act together, you’ll need to play as the Los Angeles Chargers next season. But this is one area where you have a potential edge on the Rams: they’ve stated publicly that are waiting until 2019 to unveil a new logo and uniforms (and their current uniforms are among the least-inspired and worst-selling in the league).
You don’t have time to waste, the deadlines for 2018 redesigns are rapidly approaching: bring in agency partners who know a thing or two about sports marketing and get started on a new name and brand, one worthy of Los Angeles’s football team. A few thought starters:
- The Los Angeles Outlaws
First off, if you’re superstitious, this one gets points for being a human mascot instead of an animal. Teams with animal mascots have only won 12 of the 50 Super Bowls (to 37 for humans and 1 for machine–the Jets). Besides, everyone is L.A. is guilty of something. - The California Dream
Shamelessly stealing this one from Katie Baker, because a little bit of Cali chill is the perfect antidote to the always in-your-face NFL vibe. - The Hollywood Franchise
Again, stealing from The Ringer (this time Ben Lindbergh) because this one makes way too much sense: “The Franchise” sounds legit, and working Hollywood in could be a great differentiator against the Los Angeles Rams. - The Los Angeles Diablos
Come on, how could you not get excited for an L.A. Diablos vs Las Vegas Raiders showdown twice a year? - The Los Angeles Stallions
Remember when Jimmy Dix threw that football to save that dude’s life? That was bonkers. - The Los Angeles Lazers
Ok, this one was an old indoor soccer team, but imagine what the Nike design team could do with ‘lazers.’ (And yes, you need to spell it with a ‘z’.) - The Los Angeles Express
Great throwback that comes with the added bonus, of giving you hundreds of angry tweets from Trump, who will be convinced you’re trying to remind the world how he killed the USFL.
Once you’ve got your new name, get your asses on a plane to Portland, get in a room with the design geniuses at Nike, don’t leave until they’ve given you the next Ducks/Seahawks-level uniform heat. Purists can mock those looks all they want, the next generation of fans is all about them.
Make a quick rebrand (and the viking funeral of the Chargers identity) a priority and this time next year, you unveil the new team name, uniforms, positioning, one year before the Rams. You’ll get a leg up in the race to become “L.A.’s Football Team” by getting a year’s worth of jerseys, caps, shirts, Bud Light cans, etc out into the wild.
…and new fans
If you want to break through in L.A., where the Rams have a year’s head start building their local army, you guys need some famous fans. Fortunately, there are more than enough to go around (and it’s not like the Rams completely won anyone over in their first year back).
You need to start recruiting a few high-profile fans. You need yourJack Nicholson. Or any small army of celebrities like those who turn out for Laker or Dodger games.
Truth be told, in this time of high-profile collaborations and strategic partnerships, you should actually go one step further, call up WME-IMG, and pull a Nets or Raptors and find your Jay-Z or Drake-style fractional owner/celebrity face of the new franchise.
In the meantime, there is an even more important step to redefining the team’s identity: the team you put on the field…
Get Your Product Right
Building a winner in a city that demands it
The reality is, L.A. demands a winner and until you can put a good team on the field, you’re going to struggle to put butts in the seats. (Fortunately, you’ll only have 30,000 of them to worry about for the next two seasons.)
There is one quick hack that can help buy you some interest and time to build a contender: bring in the most popular football players in L.A. That means going out and acquiring and drafting as many Trojans (and if you must, Bruins) as possible. You’re lucky, this draft alone you have guys like Juju Smith-Schuster, Adoree Jackson, Zach Banner, and Justin Davis from USC who could help provide an immediate reason for the local fanbase to tune in.
…backed by leadership that will inspire confidence in new fans
Your first big move of the offseason, hiring Anthony Lynn, was a good first step to get your team leadership right. Now, you guys need someone to become the face of the franchise from a front office/management standpoint. Someone who can look at fans through those rebuilding years and get them to trust the process.
Fortunately, because you’re building a new franchise from the ashes of an old one, you have the benefit of cherry picking a few famous faces from the old team (LaDanian Tomlinson, Kellen Winslow?) while reaching out to other luminaries of Los Angeles football who don’t necessarily have ties to the Chargers (someone who spent time with multiple California teams–and once cut off his finger so he could re-enter a game–like Ronnie Lott could be a great fit) to formalize their involvement with the franchise. Get a few football legends on board and start promoting the culture and team identity that you need to establish going forward.
Put that all together, and you can almost picture it: September 2019, the Hollywood Franchise kicks off against the Las Vegas Raiders in an AFC West matchup at the new Los Angeles football stadium that will give us a preview of football’s hottest new rivalry of the ’20s and beyond.
Now’s the time. Let the rebuilding begin.
