STADIUM THEORY: Are the Chargers trying to get money from the Rams to stay in San Diego?

I have a theory about those reports that came out on Sunday morning. You know the ones....

Now, most people took those leaked reports to be a threat to San Diegans. I know I did, at first. “A way to use fear to try and get more positive votes,” is what I thought.

However, the more I thought about it, the less it made sense. Anyone who follows politics at all knows that telling people something is going to fail usually drives down the number of people that will show up to vote for it, so what the hell are the Chargers doing by putting this out?

Then I remembered a long-forgotten rumor about Los Angeles that former Chargers GM A.J. Smith hinted around on his appearance on the Kevin Acee show on 1090AM last week: The league doesn’t actually want two teams in Los Angeles and will do what it has to as a way to keep out the Chargers and the Raiders.

The other part of that rumor is that Los Angeles Rams’ owner Stan Kroenke is willing to spend a lot of money to keep the market all to himself. Add in the fact that the other NFL owners have always loved having L.A. as an open option as leverage for other teams around the country, and this starts to make some sense.

On today’s podcast, I dove into this rumor and came up with a theory about the Chargers leaking their plans to move to Los Angeles next season as a way to scare Kroenke into throwing some money their way.

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If the Chargers’ ballot measure doesn’t pass but Cory Briggs’ initiative does (it only requires a 50% +1 approval to pass), the Chargers would simply need to come up with a way to fund a downtown stadium themselves to get it. If Kroenke were to match the $300M from the NFL, then the Chargers could essentially just redirect the $550M relocation fee towards a downtown stadium in San Diego and it would seem like they were home-free.

All of this is just theorizing and conjecture, of course. I know nothing. I’m just thinking out loud. However, it makes you wonder....are the Chargers pivoting off their own initiative and on to the one put together by Cory Briggs? Take a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think in the comments below.