SDSU stadium could be solution to Chargers problem

County Supervisor Dianne Jacob has a reputation as a problem-solver rather than an ideologue, so it shouldn’t be surprising that some of her comments during discussion on keeping the Chargers football team in San Diego might provide an actual solution to the issue of the Chargers’ demand for a new stadium.

On September 26 the supervisors approved a Memorandum of Understanding to work with the City of San Diego and other agencies to find a suitable stadium site and investigate the feasibility of a joint powers authority. Three times during that discussion Jacob mentioned the possibility of including San Diego State University as one of the partners in the Memorandum of Understanding.

The supervisors’ action did not commit the county to any funding, but if a joint powers authority or any other county funding were involved a countywide vote would be required. Passage of such a vote would be much more likely for a San Diego State University stadium also used by the Chargers than for a Chargers stadium.

For years the Chargers have denied press credentials to community weekly papers which represent the suburbs. That is their right, but if the readers of my sports section can live without the Chargers, so can the taxpayers of San Diego County. I realize that the Chargers have to prioritize requests for press credentials, but if there’s no room in the press box for me it doesn’t matter to me whether that press box is in San Diego, Los Angeles, or Oklahoma City. The Chargers may be San Diego’s team, but they’re not Lakeside’s team or Fallbrook’s team or Ramona’s team. It is not in the best interests of the community papers to support a sports entity which treats them as second-class citizens at the expense of activities which cater to the editorial needs of the suburbs’ media representatives.

San Diego State University’s athletic department has been much more accommodating to the community papers. The suburban journalists hold no antipathy toward the Aztecs. Sportswriters dealing with the Aztecs’ sports information office face the problem of figuring out which assistant sports information director is responsible for a specific sport, but weekly papers are not denied credentials to cover SDSU games. A stadium for San Diego State University would not draw the opposition that a stadium for the Chargers would.

Funding of a college stadium would also be a more appropriate use of public funds than funding a facility for a professional team. A handful of Aztecs will eventually play in the pros, but most of them are true college students who will enter non-athletic careers or positions in sports medicine or physical education. A college football facility is an amenity for students rather than multimillionaire business owners, and education is a suitable use of public funds.

A college stadium closer to campus, if not contiguously part of the main campus, could also increase attendance at Aztec games, providing more revenue for the athletic program and benefiting all SDSU sports.

There is nothing to prevent the Chargers from playing at San Diego State’s stadium. The San Diego Jaws, before they became the Sockers, played at Aztec Bowl. The American Basketball Association’s Conquistadors played their initial season at Peterson Gym.

Times are different than in 1960, when the regents of the University of California denied a request to allow professional football teams to use university facilities. The Oakland Coliseum didn’t exist at that time, and the American Football League’s new franchise sought to play at Cal’s Edwards Field. Both the Oakland City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors approved resolutions urging the regents to allow the Raiders to play at Edwards Field.

Oakland is in Alameda County. Cal is in the city of Berkeley and in Contra Costa County. Not only did the concept of a professional team playing in a college stadium earn municipal support in 1960, but so did the idea of the Raiders playing in a regional facility rather than in Oakland specifically.

If the county is to spend any money on the Chargers, it should be for a musical pipe from Hamelin, Germany, along with the piper’s expenses from Chargers headquarters to Oklahoma City so that the stock cars can move into Qualcomm Stadium now that Cajon Speedway’s gone. But if the Chargers want to rent a college stadium from SDSU, there’s nothing wrong with providing public funding for a school which augments its income by leasing the stadium on available dates.

The opposition of the community weekly papers who have been denied Chargers press credentials will make countywide approval of a Chargers stadium extremely difficult. But that opposition won’t exist for a new football stadium for San Diego State University which could be used by other teams. Dianne Jacob may have solved the Chargers problem with her comments.