SAN DIEGO -- On any given Sunday in December, you will see more San Diego residents in Fernando Tatís jerseys cruising down the boardwalk in Pacific Beach than a Justin Herbert Chargers’ jersey, or any Chargers jersey for that matter.
This, of course, comes as no surprise to any sports fan that lives in San Diego and is part of a sports culture that changed forever when the Chargers bailed to Los Angeles nearly seven years ago.
The San Diego Padres, blessed by the baseball gods with the right ownership group in place when Dean Spanos left for Uncle Kroenke’s guesthouse, have become the de facto NFL team of this fine city. Who needs the star power of Herbert or Derwin James when you can don a Manny Machado, Tatís, Joe Musgrove or Jackson Merrill jersey and actually feel good about the team you’re supporting and the name of the city on the front?
So, when I received a message from The Sporting Tribune CEO Arash Markazi about a piece on viewership for Chargers games in San Diego and if fans are starting to come around with Jim Harbaugh at the helm, I immediately recoiled and mentally composed a dozen excuses (none of which I sent) as to why I wasn’t interested in writing about it.
Interesting to see San Diego still make the list but Los Angeles still not a top ten market. https://t.co/zCLW3Q07VG
— Ben Koo (@bkoo) December 10, 2024
I personally and professionally stopped covering the Chargers immediately after Philip Rivers left the organization and moved on to the Indianapolis Colts. The retirement of Antonio Gates was the last true tie of any player to this fan base and city and people were ready to just move on to something less toxic. Sports is supposed to be about joy and hope and the community bond and the Chargers were the definition of exhausting polarization. Covering the Chargers as though they never left was never worth it and that doesn’t change just because they have a competent head coach.
In the first few years after their departure, social media and sports radio was dominated by ex-Chargers fans delighting in hate-watching, the inevitable “Chargering” and taking note each time an analyst or broadcaster mistakenly called them the San Diego Chargers. But as time passes, so has the Chargers fading relevance in San Diego, and thankfully our sports consciousness has been dominated by the Padres investing in their fan base and a few trips to the playoffs.
Time heals most wounds but I can promise you that the majority of sports fans in this city will NEVER come around as long as the team is owned by the Spanos family, or that the name of the team starts with LOS ANGELES. It doesn’t matter that Jim Harbaugh is the coach, or that the likeable Justin Herbert is and was the perfect heir apparent to Philip Rivers.
Are there still Chargers fans in San Diego? Yes, of course. There’s no replacement for the NFL and that team was here 56 years, creating generations of fans and memories that will never go away. But it’s delusional to think San Diegans are starting to come on board or that passion for that team will ever even remotely return to what it was, when the football team ran this city and dominated the local sports headlines 165 days a year. For Pete’s sake there’s more Jets and Bears’ bars in my neighborhood than Chargers bars. The Jets!
So, why was San Diego the 5th ranked market to watch the Kansas City Chiefs doink their way to their 9th straight AFC West title whereas Los Angeles didn’t even crack the top 10? San Diego had a 13.4 household rating and 43 share, behind only Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver and Pittsburgh.
Yes, Patrick Mahomes vs. Justin Herbert has sizzle but let’s put those numbers into perspective, courtesy of this previous note by The San Diego Union-Tribune.
From 2004-14, the average season rating for local Chargers telecasts ranged between 26.0 (2007) and 31.6 (2010).
So before we declare that the Chargers are worming their way back into San Diego’s heart, let’s just realize those numbers have plummeted by more than half of what they used to be when San Diego actually cared.
San Diego was and is a great NFL market, they just lucked out with a bad owner. The Sunday night football ratings for Chiefs and Chargers are not a reflection whatsoever on San Diego or any resurrection of fandom. It just magnifies Los Angeles’ indifference to a team they never wanted or asked for in the first place.
Now let’s get back to what San Diegans are actually passionate about, their chances of landing Roki Sasaki.