Good afternoon, Power Readers.
I apologize for not having a post ready this morning but this past weekend was very busy. While I still hope to have a post each day this week and next, commentary most certainly is going to be limited since the next several days promise to be extra busy. In the meantime, here's a little story about a new stadium for the Chargers in San Diego - or lack thereof.
Cash-strapped San Diego doesn't have the money to help the Chargers build a new stadium, Mayor Jerry Sanders said, opening the door for Southern California's only NFL team to leave the city it has called home for 45 years.
Sanders said he plans to ask the City Council to amend the Chargers' lease to allow the team to begin looking at sites elsewhere in San Diego County before the end of the year. If the team fails to find a new home in the county before Jan. 1, the Chargers would be free to negotiate a deal anywhere in the country.
The Chargers can leave San Diego after the 2008 season if they pay off the approximately $60 million in bonds the city issued in 1997 to expanded Qualcomm Stadium.
"I do not think it would be prudent or honest for me to say to taxpayers 'We can't resurface our roadways, but we can finance a stadium,"' the mayor said.
The Chargers' negotiator, Mark Fabiani, said the smaller cities of Oceanside, Chula Vista, and National City to the north and south of San Diego have approached the team, along with a private investor whose identity Fabiani wouldn't disclose.
Addendum: You don't often hear a politician tell a team to go play ball somewhere else. Here's what would really be unique and what would quite possibly be a real tourist attraction (as long as it remains unique, unlike these so-called retro-stadiums): put it here and make it out of these.