Over the past couple weeks, with the furor over the San Diego Union Tribune's proposal dying down, there have been some interesting developments in regards to the Chargers' stadium situation, as well as other teams who have equally (if not more) tenuous stadium situations.

We'll take a brief look at the latest information regarding the Chargers, the City of San Diego, and now the County of San Diego. We'll also take a brief glimpse at what's happening in other locations, most notably San Francisco, St. Louis, and Minnesota.

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I don't mind the Occupy Movement. As someone who would like to have a few more bucks in his pocket, the redistribution of wealth sounds like a good idea. However, sometimes the people associating themselves with the movement do something stupid and make everyone else look bad. This morning was one of those times.

As most of you are aware, Qualcomm Stadium was re-branded as Snapdragon Stadium before the San Diego Chargers' beatdown of the Baltimore Ravens on NBC's Sunday Night Football and remained as such through the Poinsettia Bowl and Holiday Bowl. To make this change, Qualcomm would have to pay cold, hard cash.

Sanders had charged Qualcomm $1,000 for city staff time, saying he wasn't about to "shake down" the company for what amounted to a greater public good.

Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs is a big contributor to the mayor's Central Library and Balboa Park renovation projects.

But a Dec. 7 memorandum of law from City Attorney Jan Goldsmith had warned Sanders that the move wasn't "legally permissible", suggesting the city was due "additional compensation".

An advertising expert consulted by Voice of San Diego, NBC San Diego's online media partner, estimates the deal gave Qualcomm upwards of $125,000 worth of TV exposure.

Source: Qualcomm's Snapdragon Issue Haunts Mayor in Legal Fallout | NBC San Diego

This morning, the Occupy San Diego people decided to take matters into their own hands.

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On Sunday morning, a lot of us awakened to a dazzling artist’s rendering of a football stadium located at the current 10^th Avenue Marine Terminal, as part of an editorial written by staff at the San Diego Union Tribune. The plan included new bayfront beach access, public parks, a stadium, an arena, and further south expansion of the Convention Center.

After reading through the ideas in the editorial, I learned a couple of interesting nuggets of information regarding the Chargers, the city, and about the potential land value of the Qualcomm stadium site. There were also important details left out of the article that made it hard for me, and others, to take the editorial with complete seriousness.

Before continuing, I urge all readers and commenters to actually read the U-T’s editorial.

Overall, however, there were enough interesting and good ideas in the editorial that I think it can and should be discussed further. We’ll do that after the jump…

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Now that the Chargers have finished a highly disappointing season, we have to now turn our thoughts towards the offseason. Some have projected that 2012 will be the last season for the Chargers in San Diego.

With that in mind, let's take a brief look at what has changed in the last few months, and what milestones we have ahead of us for the next few months.

We'll also take a brief glimpse at other teams that have been rumored to move to Los Angeles in the coming years, and see what has changed for them recently.

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Do you guys remember last week when Dean Spanos came out and told us all that he was not going to fire Norv Turner, nor AJ Smith? Do you also remember that a bunch of people on the internet argued that this was all part of Dean's master plan to move the team to Los Angeles? I contend a large contingency of those people were wearing foil hats at the time, trying to drown out the voices in their heads that the government planted.

The theory was that Spanos — or Sapnos, whichever you prefer — was going against the vocal public's opinion and sticking with his beleaguered head coach and General Manager in an effort to get ticket sales to tank. Then when ticket sales tanked enough, then he could use that as an excuse to move the team to Los Angeles, saying publicly, "see, people in San Diego don't care about this team!"

Well, it was hogwash then and it's hogwash now, as Mayor Jerry Sanders and the Chargers announced today in a joint statement that the team would not be triggering the exit clause in their Qualcomm Stadium lease, and instead will play the 2012 season in San Diego. In the statement, the team also maintains that they "will continue to work together to explore publically-acceptable ways to build a new Super Bowl-quality stadium in San Diego."

Be sure to check out the full release on Chargers.com, as it contains a Q&A with team Special Counsel Mark Fabiani regarding the future of the stadium issue.

Last night, an article appeared in the San Diego Union-Tribune in which Chargers General Counsel Mark Fabiani disclosed the broad outlines that will entail a proposal for a downtown football stadium east of Petco Park.

Fabiani reiterated the Chargers' idea that the stadium could serve as a supplement to a Convention Center expansion has been floated before, but Fabiani takes it a step further this time, proposing that money that was originally slated for a Convention Center could be re-directed to help offset stadium construction costs.

Needless to say, this is ruffling the feathers of more than a few people in the San Diego Convention industry.  On the other hand, it does drop some tidbits of information regarding the direction the Chargers are going.

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Over the last several days, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders embarked on a "fact-finding" trip to Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Denver.  No, it wasn't to get advance scouting on Todd Haley's plans for Jamaal Charles, or finding when exactly Peyton Manning would return to the field, and it certainly wasn't to help sort out whether Tim Tebow sucks slightly less than Brady Quinn.

In fact, it was something we've been waiting desperately for from local San Diego government; a show of significant interest in working on a stadium solution for San Diego and the Chargers.  Considering the recent developments in Los Angeles, this fact-finding trip could not have come at a more important time.

Some thoughts on this trip are given below...

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As was reported ad nauseum during several local news broadcasts yesterday evening, and in this morning's Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles (LA) City Council voted unanimously to move forward with Anschutz Entertainment Group's (AEG) proposal to rebuild part of the LA Convention Center and build a new football stadium in downtown LA, adjacent to the Staples Center.

The new facility, Farmers Field, is currently projected to open in 5 years, provided that the framework of the deal doesn't blow up over that time.  As far as San Diego is concerned... does this mean we're losing the Chargers?

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