The Latest NFL Stadium Mess, or Old Man Yells at Cloud

Mark Fabiani is the San Diego Chargers' lawyer and point man on their efforts to get a new stadium. Before that, he was a "political strategist, crisis management expert, former Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles and chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bradley, and former White House lawyer and spokesman," according to ye olde Wikipedia article. That is to say, this man is supposed to know how to argue. His whole life has been arguing, or thinking about how to argue, or telling other people how to argue.

For the last 14 years, he's been arguing with the city of San Diego on the Chargers' behalf for a new stadium. There is no new stadium, so he must not be very good at arguing. This has been confirmed by his published remarks to the San Diego Mayor's Stadium Task Force.

You know how this goes here at VICE Sports: someone of some prominence or notoriety says something incredibly stupid about stadiums, we dust off our Old Man Yells At Cloud lede image spot, and FJM this shit.

Before I begin, in the words of Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Before we embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months…"

We appreciate the enormous difficulty of the challenge before you.

It's always good to have some perspective.

We are now in the midst of our 14th year of work on this issue…

…an effort that has cost the Spanos family more than $15 million, has explored sites all over San Diego County, and has resulted in nine different proposals - all unsuccessful so far.

Maybe that's because you've been asking for $650 million from taxpayers to build it, which is an awful lot of money for a city with none of it.

And at the outset of your work, we would like to thank you all for volunteering your time to trying to find a solution to this long-running San Diego stadium dilemma.

"Will you give us $650 million?"
"No."
"Hmm…quite the dilemma we have here."

Based on this 14 years worth of experience…

…we would like to suggest four principles we hope will help guide your work:

Here's what we've learned during our decade and a half of incompetence:

But after all of these years of work, we also understand this: It might be that -- despite the great effort that has been expended -- there is at least at this time no publicly acceptable solution to the stadium issue in San Diego.

"Give us $900 million."

"No."

"OK, $650 million."

"No."

"THERE IS NO SOLUTION TO THIS IMPASSE!"

Former elected officials have tried to exploit the Chargers and the stadium issue for their own political advantage.

"Give us $650 million."

"OK, but I get to say I gave you $650 million."

"No deal."

It might be worth checking with Dick Murphy and Mike Aguirre to see how that worked out for them.

OK, let's do some Googling about these guys:

Dick Murphy financially destroyed San Diego and resigned in April, 2005, amidst, like, four concurrent scandals. It was so bad that the New York Times dubbed San Diego "Enron by the Sea." Even the mayor who ruined San Diego knew not to give the Chargers $650 million for a new stadium.

Mike Aguirre has been involved in several lawsuits with the Chargers, including getting a controversial "state of the art" clause in their lease with the city—which required the city to pay for stadium improvements to keep the stadium up to par with the newest and best stadiums, which, LOL—removed from the contract and to force them to stop selling multi-year season ticket packages while simultaneously threatening to move. I don't know, you could call this a "political advantage" but it seems more like "not allowing a private company to take massive advantage of the taxpayers."

Meanwhile, giving taxpayers money to build a stadium so that the team stops half-heartedly threatening to move is the very definition of "political advantage."

First, is the proposal one that has a strong chance of being approved by two-thirds of the voters?

At the beginning of February, a poll by two news organizations found 63 percent of San Diegans would vote against taxpayer funds going towards a new Chargers stadium.

The second real world stress test should be this: Are the Mayor and a strong majority of the City Council prepared to support the recommendations of your Task Force?

Well, the Mayor appointed the stadium task force, so…

The third real world stress test for any proposal should be this: Does the proposal recognize the economic realities of our local marketplace and of the NFL?

Meanwhile, in Roger Goodell's office:

Our studies - and the real world experience of the Padres - demonstrate that we cannot sell PSLs in any significant numbers here in San Diego. A Task Force recommendation that ignores this reality will be worthless.

Ah, I see you're still on the "make someone else pay for it" line of thought.

In addition, some consultants have suggested that the stadium should be financed using revenue streams that, throughout the rest of the NFL, go to the teams. These revenue streams include naming rights, sponsorships, and the like.

"Some CRAZY people have suggested we use our OWN money for a new stadium!"

"Explain how."

Of course, if the Chargers were to forego all of these revenues, then the team would be fall even further behind the rest of the NFL than we are right now.

This could mean two things. It could mean the Chargers would fall behind on the field, which is bullshit since TV rights are shared equally amongst all the teams, and the money each team gets from TV rights alone is greater than the amount they are allowed to spend on players per the salary cap, so all of these "revenue streams" Fabiani is talking about are completely ancillary to on-field performance.

It could also mean the Chargers would fall behind financially, which would be a remarkable line of argumentation that would imply building a new stadium would actually make them worse off financially. This would be a complete and total capitulation that their only interest is to line their own pockets, and that's a terribly bad use of taxpayer dollars.

So, either way, this is total and complete horseshit.

These off-the-cuff estimates ignore the real world costs of stadiums now being built all around the country - from San Francisco to Minnesota to Atlanta. Looking around the country, new stadium costs are coming in at $1.2 to $1.5 billion.

"These stadiums are really expensive!"

And, of course, by the time we would be ready to start building here in San Diego, today's cost estimates are likely to have escalated even more. This is a real world fact that simply cannot be ignored when putting together a truly workable plan.

"And man, lemme tell you about those cost overruns that happen to every single stadium project!"

Dig up, stupid.

The fourth and final guiding principle is this: It should not be enough to suggest a plan that might succeed under perfectly controlled laboratory conditions…

Wait, you aren't building this stadium in the nook between space and time?!

…but that is unlikely to succeed in the real world of San Diego politics.

Scene from Real World: San Diego Politics:

Mayor Faulconer walks into Council President Sheeri Lightner's room at 2 a.m. complaining about the girl from the bar who wouldn't come home with him. Lightner pretends to listen but is really just hoping Faulconer leaves before he discovers Councilmember Todd Gloria hiding in the closet.

Now, years later, after millions of wasted tax dollars, the whole project is back to square one - with no realistic solution in site.

Pretty rich to bring up millions of wasted tax dollars in the middle of a letter demanding the taxpayers waste hundreds of millions of tax dollars.

The Chargers do not intend to waste years of time and millions of dollars on a proposal that City leaders simply do not have the capacity to actually implement.

"Yeah, forget the time, just give us the millions of dollars."

In addition, we would like to take a moment to describe the situation now facing the Chargers franchise.

Over those two decades the Chargers have worked diligently to win fans and business partners in the LA/Orange County market.

"Over the last two decades, the Chargers have worked diligently to undermine your city so we can extract the dwindling amount of taxpayers dollars available for development projects for our own personal profit."

And the Chargers have succeeded. Now, fully 25 percent of the Chargers' season ticket base comes from the LA/Orange County market (along with the Inland Empire).

…I'm actually coming up with a way to rephrase this more obnoxiously short of simply wagging my penis.

If another team - or two other teams - enters the LA/Orange County markets, most of that Chargers' business there will disappear.

This scenario has never happened in American professional sports. Ever.

This will put the Chargers at a significant competitive economic disadvantage.

We've already covered this. The NFL exists as an antitrust exemption to enforce local monopolies. This will not happen.

Simply put, it would not be fair to the Chargers…

Oh, this is gonna be good.

…a team that has worked for 14 years to find a stadium solution in San Diego County…

A quick reminder of what their version of "work" is:

"Give us $900 million."

"No."

"OK, $650 million."

"No."

…to allow other teams that themselves abandoned the LA market to now return and gut the Chargers' local revenue stream.

This wouldn't be fair, they say! Unlike receiving handouts from the public because they threatened to abandon their fans. Now that's fair!

The Chargers are continuing to work hard to find a solution in San Diego.

"…$600 million?"

But we also want to be clear with this Task Force right at the outset: We are keeping a close eye on developments in LA.

Ah, because threatening to move when you don't get hundreds of millions of dollars for nothing is that "fair" thing you mentioned earlier, right?

We do not have a choice but to also monitor and evaluate our options there. Simply put, it would be irresponsible for the Chargers not to be taking every possible step to protect the future of the franchise.

This is like watching two people play Russian roulette with no bullets in the chamber. If San Diego moves, their fans have to drive two hours north every Sunday, which obviously isn't a big deal since 25 percent of San Diego's current season ticket holders do that now. Meanwhile, the city is all "yeah, whatever" and just takes the gun and clicks before sliding it back across the table because they know there aren't any bullets in there in the first place. They just keep going round and round, over and over, forgetting that without any bullets, this game is kinda stupid. Maybe they should go outside and enjoy that nice San Diego weather, instead.