This is a great time of year to be thankful for what we have, where we have been, and what the future holds. Although the Chargers have lost their way a bit in recent years, the month of December used to hold such incredible promise! This advent calendar is an attempt to hearken back to these days of December joy. Each day will bring a new advent from the Bolts’ history that makes it wonderful to be a Chargers fan.

Dec. 12: The Rivers-Mobile

The sports world changed on September 4, 2017. On the eve of a rollercoaster NFL season, official word finally broke out about Philip Rivers’ mobile film lab. The sports world was on fire.

In a nutshell, his mode of transportation is a mobile man cave with the seats like those in a first-class airplane set side-by-side in the back facing forward. There is plenty of room for a 6-foot-5 quarterback to fully recline while watching film on the 40-inch television screen that separates the front seat and rear cabin. There is satellite TV, WiFi, and a small refrigerator. Philip Rivers transformed one of the worst parts of the move to LA into a possible advantage.

As the San Diego Union-Tribune reports, the price tag for this pimped-out ride is about $200,000. Throw in a driver’s salary and you have a way to keep your San Diego roots and your LA reality possible.

The premier family-man put it this way:

“My two biggest things were my family time and my preparation and what I owe this football team,” Rivers said. “I was not going to sacrifice either of them in any big proportion. I can look at all the pluses and minuses and say, ‘OK. This does it.’ This allows me to get home in the 6 to 7 hour, which is when I got home the last 11 years, and it allows me to watch all or more of the film I watched before.”

The first ideas for this new mode of transportation came when Rivers and backup QB Kellen Clemens were discussing possibly carpooling to LA. It quickly became clear that Rivers was not keen on driving himself for 3 hours each day, and the idea began to evolve from there. He even considered a helicopter!

“That was about 15 minutes of me doing an Internet search and five more minutes with me wondering, ‘What in the world am I thinking about this for?’ I’ve never been in one in my life. … Plus, unless it could pick me up in my neighborhood and land on the practice field, it wasn’t going to be that much faster.”

So Rivers did another Internet search. He typed “mobile offices southern California” into Google. He found a company in Oxnard that caters to Hollywood types and CEOs.

Becker Automotive Design got to work on exactly what Rivers was hoping for—and then some! The process even let fans take a quick look at Philip Rivers’ plans for the future:

“If this was year five for me, we’d move,” Rivers said. “We’d want to stay in the same city, but I’d have a long way to go. You don’t know. … This is the home stretch. I could have five years. I’m only signed up for three.”

It seems that Becker Automotive Design does everything from CEO mobile internet offices to Quarterback film rooms to over-reinforced super popemobiles, so now you know where to go to if you ever sign a premier NFL contract.

-Jason “But does it get Netflix?” Michaels