"When allegiance calls, the archaficionado of pro football sheds the trappings of normal life and, coped in the bliss of his daydreams, flies forth to worship Sunday's sweaty demigods." -George Plimpton. Sports Illustrated September 13, 1965
Al Michael's has reached the point of his career where he does not feel the need to sugarcoat his opinions.
For a guy who has been broadcasting games for over fifty years you could argue that Michaels has earned the right to back his 1962 Coup DeVille out of the driveway without using the mirror.
There is no amount of pettiness that the 78-year old Michaels can spew from his job at Amazon Prime that could tarnish his reputation. His famous voice is attached to the "Miracle on Ice" game in the 1980 Winter Olympics. You know? College age hockey players from the US upset the Soviet Union's squad of Communist Monsters? Disney made a movie about it.
So when the Las Vegas Raiders travelled to play the Rams at Sofi Stadium in 2022 Michaels and analyst Kirk Herbstreit amusingly wondered which team had more fans in the building (The teams play at Sofi Stadium again on Sunday).
“It’s hard to tell where the crowd is right now,” said Michaels. “I think mainly Raiders a little bit, but you have a P.A. announcer here who incessantly screams, ‘WHOSE HOUSE?’”
Herbstreit interjected, “You love it.”
“I hate it,” snapped Michaels.
“He wants them to say, ‘Rams’ house,’” continued Michaels, “but as far as the Raiders are concerned, well, this is kinda like their AirBnB.”
The NFL left LA in 1995 and did not return until 2016 when the Saint Louis Rams became the Los Angeles Rams once again. Born in 1936, the Cleveland Rams played for a decade in Ohio before owner Dan Reeves moved the franchise to Los Angeles in 1946.
If you think about it, teams have been either moving west to LA, or threatening to, since before the Potsdam Agreement.
In the late fifties, the Rams went from being the major professional sports franchise in Southern California to being one of five. The Los Angeles Dodgers moved from Brooklyn in 1958, the Los Angeles Chargers of the American Football League were founded in 1960, the Los Angeles Lakers moved from Minneapolis in 1960, and the Los Angeles Angels were awarded to Gene Autry in 1961.
In the decades that followed the Kings, Raiders, Clippers, Ducks, Galaxy, Sparks, LAFC, and obviously, the Chargers would join them. All the while competing with the two major universities teams for eyeballs. Nobody could possible be a fan of all of them, so they choose.
Thirty years ago, faced with the prospect of losing both of their pro football teams, fans of both teams descended on Anaheim Stadium to eat, drink, cheer, and beat the shit out of each other.
This is from Ken Ellingwood's story in the LA Times on November 14, 1994:
Police counted at least 26 altercations and arrested 14 people—mostly for drunkenness and fighting—during a sold-out football game that drew 65,208 spectators and was watched as closely for the battling in the stands as on the field. Besides those arrested, 55 fans were ejected for general misbehavior.
"I saw men just beating on each other rapid fire. I’ve been to several hockey games in St. Louis but never seen crowd fights like at the game today,” said Rob Harvath, a visiting retail analyst for Anheuser-Busch who watched the game—and the fights—from the beer company’s luxury box.
After the professional football teams ditched them, those with a taste for football didn't go hungry; a whole generation of Anglinos were given the run of the menu.
Unchained from the local franchises, the television broadcasts could now air the best teams; the best games. Perhaps you stayed loyal to your parent's teams? Others simply chose a team that won indiscriminately of what decade it is: clubs like Pittsburg, Green Bay, San Francisco, New England, and, more recently Kansas City gained LA chapters of fandom.
Have they ever lived there? Hell, have they ever even visited there?
Doesn't matter. All the mattered is that the interest in The Game continued to grow.
The vacuum in Los Angeles didn't diminish any interest in the sport, even if you now had to catch a flight to see game.
"First, the climate. There is none. This isn’t a Chargers town. This has never been a Chargers town. The Chargers had 21 years to woo us as an uncontested suitor and still couldn’t make it a Chargers town." Bill Plaschke. LA Times
While Plasckhe isn't wrong, he also isn't telling the truth.
Aside from the Dodgers and the Lakers, this isn't any team's town. The neighborhoods are too diffuse, the championships are too intermittent, the beaches are too enticing, and the streaming sites are pushing too much original content.
When the Chargers moved north in 2017 they played their home games in the Stub Hub Center (now Dignity Health Sports Park), the 27,000 seat home of the LA Galaxy.
The internment facility in Carson that the team shared with the MLS team was a punchline, but it was a pristine, sparkling punchline that did not subject the partisans to long lines that inched slowly towards repugnant troughs as they stood in rivers of piss.
The team sold tickets to the tiny venue on the promise that it was a 'once in a lifetime' experience, and it was, for better or worse.
The outcome was disastrous for the Chargers. Ticket brokers made a fortune off of fans desperate to see their team in person for three years. Why not pay triple the price of a normal ticket if it was a one-off opportunity?
Even the Charger fans who bought season tickets realized that they might prefer selling them at a markup than attending the "home games" just to be treated like Syrian refugees.
My cousin and her husband were season ticket holders that attended the first handful of games in Carson. The last one was an October game against the Philadelphia Eagles. After four quarters of taunting and cursing her husband had seen enough.
"I'll never take her to another game," he said. "Its hard enough asking her to go just for me, but nobody needs that abuse. That's not what I signed up for."
They still haven't been back.
Stan Kroenke and the Spanos family would have no trouble selling their seats. The NFL's popularity has not waned. Los Angeles, as a Petri dish, has proven that.
Since the NFL's big tent went back up that same social experiment revealed that tribalism, alcohol, and chutzpah produce boorish fan behavior that we thought was reserved for soccer hooligans in Europe.
If the Stub Hub center was a pilot episode for fans behaving badly, then the opening of Sofi Stadium has been a multi-season arc of primeval bloodsport.
Cell phone cameras document what it must have looked like when Xerxes Persian armies sacked Athens. The spirit of the mob desecrating the homes of their opponents is as present today as it was in 480 BCE.
It is no longer enough to revel in your team's triumphs and travails on the field. Today's fans are active participants in the battle; every first down an opportunity to gloat; every touchdown another chance to rub salt in the wounds of your neighbors.
Which brings me back to the PA announcers. Since the building welcomed fans in in 2021 the piped-in noise from both teams has been somewhat of an embarrassment. The teams are admitting that they don't have the engagement from the seats that most NFL clubs enjoy in their home stadiums and overcompensate by screaming at them.
You could argue that Angelinos forgot how noise at a football game works in their quarter century without a home team, but that is as believable as proclaiming a Catholic forgot which portions of the mass to kneel. I'm not buying it.
I asked Alister Lloyd, an attorney who co-hosts a Chargers podcast from Australia, what he made of the PA guy. (Lloyd was able to talk his wife into a honeymoon side trip to see the Chargers play the Rams in January, 2023.)
"We have none of that stuff in Australia," said Lloyd. "Dead silence at sporting events. You just watch the sport." He laughed.
"It is a very American thing to do. Different cultures. Australians like me generally don't understand why there has to be noise and a DJ's voice talking through loudspeakers after every down."
The Chargers host a large contingent of Raider fans annually, even though the Black Hole South thing has yet to provide any advantage to them. On Sunday the Raiders lost to the Rams making their regular season record at Sofi 1-6. (We all know that the Raiders don't play in playoff games.)
The fans paid the ticket broker's prices once again. Resale vendors estimate that the Silver and Black fans turned out at minimum of 60 percent.
The PA guy screamed, "WHOOOOOOOOSE HOUSE?"
The crowd answered in partisan fashion. The officials spot the ball, blow a whistle, and the game resumes. The NFL is back in Los Angeles. The owners don't care what color the jerseys are so long as your money is green.
I have been fortunate enough to attend Chargers games in many different cities and will be in attendance tonight for the Cardinals game in Glendale, Arizona. Though some host cities are more hospitable than others (thank you Lambeau Field), I have yet to be taunted, nor have I taunted any of the home fans on my way to parking lot.
Act like you've been there before, or better yet, act like you would like to be invited back.
You can choose to be passionate about your team without behaving like a cretin. No, not the ancient Greeks who lived in Crete. The Persian army never sacked that island.
Full Disclaimer: The Rivers Lake Yacht Club is an inclusive collection of Chargers fans from all over the world who cannot be told that they do not exist, Sofi Stadium is not their home, and that Los Angeles could care less about them. At Rivers Lake Yacht Club we reject the lazy, and outdated narrative that the Chargers have no fans while celebrating the unique, courageous, and diverse voices of our own community who love Chargers football.
Sizzling article written by a passionate fan with great knowledge of Charger history and facts. All of the anecdotal embellishments add interest and charm to this well written piece. Write on!!
Ha! Love this! Hopefully a W in Glendale scratches quality football itch and the civil fandom itch without the need for peripheral performative antics. I’ll be there too! Go Bolts.