Will the San Diego Chargers Ever Move Back to Los Angeles?

Yes.

What? What do you want from me? I used the word "ever". On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero and possibilities become endless. Will the Chicago Bears ever move to Madagascar? Yes! Eventually! Or the entirety of human existence will end before that happens and then nobody will be around to tell me I was wrong.

Anyway, you didn't come here for a philosophy lesson. Let's talk about the facts. BFTB user sdvip threw out a link to this article in last night's 'After Dark' comments. That article says that AEG's plans for "Farmers Field", the one that is meant to be built downtown next to the Staples Center, can't happen. Jason Cole, the author of the article, is both right and wrong in that assessment.

I explained my understanding of that article as such:

AEG wasn't thinking in terms of money when they came up with this ridiculous plan. Nobody, anywhere, could afford to build this stadium. Ever. The plan will need to be made less expensive.

The plan is estimated to cost about $1.8 billion. With a B. If you know anything about the recent history of NFL stadiums being built, you know that an estimation of $1.8 billion probably equals total construction cost of closer to $3 billion. Obviously, that's too much.

Many took this article to mean that the San Diego Chargers will not be moving to Los Angeles, that all hope was lost by AEG to bring a team to the second most populated city in the country. This is a bit of an overreaction.

AEG needed the grandiose plan to get everyone excited, and to get Farmers Insurance to throw money at the naming rights for the stadium that might not ever exist. Now that they got that, and people are talking about football in Los Angeles like it's just a matter of time, they can start scaling the plan back in an attempt to find a happy medium between cost and result.

Is this the end of the rumors of the San Diego Chargers moving to Los Angeles? No. It is the end of "Farmers Field", the downtown L.A. stadium right next to Staples Center? Probably not, but maybe. Does this buy the city of San Diego some time to reassess their options as far as building the Chargers a stadium somewhere in the county? It does. So, for that, we celebrate.