Is it all over for an NFL stadium in San Diego?

While we await the inevitable press conference from the NFL's Executive Vice President Eric Grubman (pictured above, hilariously) regarding his meeting with San Diego politicians this morning....

Dan Sileo got a copy of a letter. He says it's a memo from the NFL that will be presented to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer today. You really need to listen to the entire letter, which takes nearly ten full minutes to read through.

Seriously, go ahead. Click the link. Listen while you eat lunch. I'll still be here when you get back.

Okay, are you back? That was awful, right? Turned your stomach a little bit, but not quite enough to ruin "Taco Tuesday", am I right?

Here's the thing: I don't think it's all that scary. Maybe I'm nuts, but that letter was definitely written by Mark Fabiani. It had all of the common Fabiani-isms that we've come to know and hate, and use to identify where random reporters the suddenly have inside information are getting that information from. Nobody in the world calls it a "quickie EIR" except for Mark Fabiani and his army of clones.

That should be scary though, right? Mark Fabiani is penning letters that that NFL is giving to the Mayor of San Diego!

Well, it depends how you look at it. Technically, if the NFL is bringing together the Chargers' representatives and the City's representatives (for the first time in weeks), Fabiani could be presenting this letter himself to the City and the league. As a person representing an NFL team, it could definitely be construed as "the NFL presenting the letter to the City."

Anyway, that's semantics and besides the point. What's the goal here? Why is Fabiani using this letter to bury the city? If he's already won, and the league already is going to let the Chargers leave (which Carmen Policy would have you believe is true, just check his bank statements), why throw dirt on top of the grave?

Exactly. Fabiani is after something, and it's entirely possible that the NFL (aka Eric Grubman) wants the exact same thing, and they're working in tandem to get it. What would that thing be? DOWNTOWN SAN DIEGO.

It's what the Chargers have wanted all along: For the Mayor to push the hoteliers to pay for the majority of a stadium downtown that Spanos can develop land and businesses around, copying the Petco Park plan (but bigger because it's the NFL). There's no reason to think the NFL wants anything different from that, so maybe they are letting Fabiani write their memos to San Diego for them.

So, here's what I think happens, and Jeff has basically been predicting it for months now. I think this is the final straw. San Diego has been backed into a corner by Fabiani, Spanos, and Grubman. He either has to do the one thing that he's been avoiding, and go begging for the hoteliers to help him out, or he has to walk away from the table and piss off the entire Chargers fanbase.

The billion dollar question, which is likely the hot button topic in today's meeting, is if the NFL would be willing to delay the Rams and Raiders for another year while Kevin Faulconer goes around cracking kneecaps and getting the hoteliers to be a part of the plan. The answer to that question is likely the answer to whether or not the NFL exists in San Diego in five years.