For many San Diegans, the Los Angeles Chargers were easier to stomach when they were ...
Chargering themselves to defeat.
Then Sunday night happened.
The big victory over the Steelers re-introduced folks to a team's bubbly end of the emotional spectrum, one that's central to the parity-driven NFL's stock-in-trade.
By defeating a good Steelers squad in Pittsburgh in front of a national audience, the Chargers hit a high note they'd not struck since the relocation.
Endorphins flowed, among fans who cheer for the transplanted Bolts.
Remember the San Diego vibe back when the Chargers would pull one off like the 33-30 victory Sunday?
Here's a difference between then and now:
Back then, even if you didn't care about Chargers, you knew they'd won a big game because San Diego had a different feel afterward. It was in the air, a free-floating vibe. Think of the bouncy ditty "Happy" by Pharrell Williams. Creating that vibe here, in the vast San Diego realm where so many transplants live, was no small feat. Roots several decades' deep were part of it.
Corny as it sounds, victories like Sunday's made Mondays in San Diego more fun, even for football writers without an emotional stake in the team.
Following the Chargers was a shared activity for many who otherwise were strangers to each other. In neighborhoods when the game telecast was airing, you'd hear the cheers and groans (or, in several Januarys, piercing shrieks of pain).
Euphoria over a football victory? In America's eighth-largest city?
After a victory in Pittsburgh with a Super Bowl berth on the line, some 70,000 fans filled the stadium in Mission Valley to welcome the team home in 1995. In most years, local TV ratings of Chargers games not only topped the San Diego market but compared favorably with ratings in several other NFL markets.
What other activity in San Diego could bind so many strangers?
This isn't to romanticize the NFL, a $14-billion, ultra-calculating industry fueled in no small part by gambling interests, tax breaks at several levels, increasingly lavish public monies toward football palaces, a growing ability to extract huge sums of money from Super Bowl host cities, and entertainers who risk the short- and long-term health of their brains and bodies.
San Diegan Philip Rivers leading his team to victory Sunday night in front of yellow towel-waving Steelers fans, though, was its own chapter in what is an unprecedented NFL story. And, like it or not, there's still a San Diego dimension threading through this evolving plot.
No other relocated NFL club had been in one city continuously so long, and near as I can tell, no other NFL franchise was transplanted to where it wasn't recruited or welcomed by the sporting public. In San Diego, the Chargers are still the most-watched NFL team. Not helping folks here cut the cord, the Padres recorded their seventh and eight consecutive losing seasons since the relocation and 14th and 15th losing seasons in the 20 years since San Diegans voted them a new ballpark.
Last year we'd seen Dean Spanos' L.A. newbies flop in several games, denying themselves a playoff berth that went to a Bills team that had far less talent. The schadenfreude crowd had plenty to savor. And despite their gains this season, the Chargers lost to the rival Chiefs and the one other good team they'd faced, the Rams.
As for the 23-22 loss to the Broncos two games ago, credit Von Miller and teammates for earning the victory, but Rivers and friends copped to blowing out too many mental fuses.
While this particular Steelers team (7-4-1) has an uneven personality, no opponent had done to any Steelers club what the Chargers pulled off Sunday, winning in Pittsburgh after trailing by 14 or more points in the second half.
A tougher magic act to conjure, though, may be this one:
Moving the needle in Greater Los Angeles.
What would that take? Reaching the Super Bowl? Winning the Super Bowl? Multiple Super Bowls? Borrowing LeBron James from the Lakers to cameo at tight end, and then winning a Super Bowl?
A longtime Angeleno who's big in the L.A. media tells me that the Chargers won't be able to win over the L.A. and Orange County market, period, because sports fans there believe the Chargers should be in San Diego. Surprising me, he said a number of Angelenos are angry that the Chargers are there.
We know this for sure: The game in Pittsburgh was the first of several big-stage opportunities this month for Team Spanos. After the coming game against the lowly Bengals makes it four contests this year against a double-digit underdog _ that last happened for the Chargers in 2009, a glide path that preceded a crash-and-burn playoff defeat in Mission Valley _ it's on to Kansas City for a Thursday night game against the Chiefs. Then it's back to Carson for a Saturday night contest against the Ravens.
