My Dean Spanos Experience; and the fear it instills

Relax Sir... I am a professional.

During the dying days of the Marty Schottenheimer Era I met Dean Spanos.

Well I didn't really meet him. I observed his behavior. I was like Jane Goodall and he was... well... he was still Dean Spanos. My analogy is neither here nor there; point being, I did not like what I saw.

During another life I wan an integral player in the seedy and corrupt world of valet parking. See this fella in the upper right? Not me, but it might as well have been. We parked the big boys and made money hand over fist creating illusions of scarcity for the unsuspecting masses. But that's not what this column is about.
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I received a call one day from a secretary with the San Diego Chargers. She spoke of a Christmas party and a need for approximately 30 cars to be valet parked. This Chargers employee prepaid for the parking and informed me that she would pay any additional moneys exceeding the flat rate for 30 guests on the night of the party. This number could be as many as an additional 10 cars. This seemed like a small number to be attending a Christmas party but who was I to pretend to have intimate knowledge of the inner-workings at Murphy Canyon. I staffed the party for 60 cars to ensure smooth sailing and then called it a day.

When it was all said and done, valet stand closed, and the final keys surrendered to festive Chargers employees the night would be recalled as an unmitigated disaster. With an expectation of 30 cars and staffing for 60 the Chargers delivered over 130 cars into the belly of the Gaslamp District on that December night.

For over an hour, party goers sat in a mostly patient queue which extended out into the oncoming traffic of Fifth Avenue. My company looked bad and we felt even worse. While we hustled to get folks to their party, one thought made laps around my mind: how could a company as prominent as the San Diego Chargers misfire so badly on projections for a Holiday party? I continued to manage the snafu... and run my balls off.

A customer was trying to cut their way into the massive Saturday evening queue, and on any other night we probably would have solicited a "special" line-jumping fee, but this was not any other night. We were working a prepaid holiday party arrangement and there was a commitment to uphold. The customer sped off against the throng of oncoming one-way traffic.

The same customer looped around the block and once again tried to line-jump. This time, denial would not be a suitable response on our part. The guest found a small opening, nosed his Mercedes Benz into said opening, and effectively parked his car at a perpendicular angle to the sidewalk. He turned off his ignition, handed the keys to my ticket-man, said he needed to get to the party, and walked off. We parked the gentleman's car.

The gentleman in the Mercedes Benz was San Diego Chargers owner, Dean Spanos.

Holiday parties, in my estimation, serve no better purpose than to boost morale and say thank you; thank you for a year of work and a job well done. Dean Spanos disagreed. He showed up late to his own party. He cut in front of all who waited patiently in what had become a downtown disaster and then scurried off without any regard for those in his employ.

What would I have done? Glad you asked!

I would have announced to the lead valet who I was and my relevance to the party. I would have asked the valet to take my car first so I could stand curbside and greet all of my employees who were stuck in this unfortunate mess. I would have welcomed them. I would have thanked them. And after the last of the serpentine line had climbed from their vehicle I would have walked them to the Christmas party that I was hosting in their honor. That's leadership. Dean Spanos is not a leader.

I've often thought about that night when observing questionable actions on the part of the Chargers. Dean Spanos showed his colors to me on that one night several years ago.

Dean Spanos shows his colors when he chooses to low-ball a solid citizen and Pro Bowl Tackle in Marcus McNeill who had clearly outplayed his rookie contract.

Dean Spanos shows his colors when he spouts off his cockamamie nonsense to the Union Tribune... and because we know who Dean Spanos is I'm fairly certain that winning a Super Bowl in San Diego will be in spite of him.

But hey... the Cowboys won a Super Bowl in 1995 in spite of Barry Switzer's ineptitude... so we've got that going for us.

Happy New Year

Delusions de Dean Spanos

A quote from Chargers owner Dean Spanos in Nick Canepa's Monday UT column:

“I like A.J., even though he’s a bit goofy,” Spanos says. “I trust him. He’ll tell you he’s made mistakes. Who hasn’t? But he takes chances. Sometimes you lose the bet, but if you’re going to win a world championship, you’ve got to take chances. I learned that from my father in our business. A.J.’s committed 100 percent to this organization.

 Now that there have been close to a billion comments on Canepa's Monday morning column it may be too little too late to be taking the piss out of Dean Spanos and the above quote.

"Too little, too late" does not compute....I've never let being late to the party abbreviate my thoughts so here it goes...

God Help Us...and them.

Really? Really, Dean? You learned from your father, that in order to win championships, you have to take chances? Really, Dean? Are you even aware as to why this entire city has the worse case of blue balls in all of sports? It's because San Diego HAS NO CHAMPIONSHIPS!!! For f*ck's sake!
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Reading that Canepa article only confirms that the Spanos family is completely out to lunch and has little clue about running a franchise. Is that being overstated? The Chargers have had a nice run since 2004 but that nice little run has occurred absent a Lombardi Trophy. Perhaps it's hyperbole to say Dean Spanos has zero clue how to run the franchise but Canepa's column is proof positive that if the Chargers win a championship it will likely be in spite of current ownership.

I feel an impending sense of doom as a Chargers fan. My brain tells me they are moving to Los Angeles, a locale which would prevent me from ever rooting for them. My heart tells me that even if the Chargers stay, the Spanos family will continue to fall short in bringing home the hardware. Furthermore, my own personal experience with meeting Dean Spanos tells me that we are doomed on all fronts.

Yes... I have a Dean Spanos story. Allow me to be your proxy in delivering a message of doom. This message however is for another post on another day (or maybe another hour).

Until then...

Chargers Questions: my pessimism runneth over

A few weeks ago when the Chargers were hammering a Cassel-less Chiefs team I took little joy in the outcome. I'm a Chargers fan. I should have been happy. It was a minimal happiness at best.

Then the Chargers destroyed the 49ers. Ehh... that was pretty cool. More enjoyment out of this one but still not running on the euphoria that a winning fan should.


Is there a point to even watching if there is little joy derived from the winning?

The truth is, I'm enthralled with the whole, "Will-they-or-won't-they-leave-San Diego-for Los Angeles" Saga. Because my mind is focused on this chasm of despair, I fail at maximizing joy from Chargers wins.

As a fan, this is a terrible state of being.


Now that the Chargers' playoff hopes have been eliminated there are only three questions to ponder:

1. Will labor strife continue, resulting in an owner imposed NFL lockout in 2011?
2. Will Dean Spanos miraculously develop into a top tier executive rather than a silver-spoon-buffoon?
3. Will the Chargers affix the worst phrase found in the English lexicon (Los Angeles) to their uniforms and office letterheads in 2012?

I believe the answers to these questions are as follows:

1. YES and then NO. As fans, we'll lose something.
2. An unequivocal NO.
3. A devastating YES.

Put your face in your palm. Grab a fork. Devour my optimism.

Why the Chargers Game May Get Blacked Out: the Longshanks Effect

In the film Braveheart, King Edward's character famously said:

"The problem with Scotland.....is that its FULL of Scots!"

Well this Charger fan will dutifully paraphrase the cruel Longshanks and posit the following:

"The problem with San Diego.....is that its FULL of transplants!"

This ladies and gentlemen is the Longshanks Effect.

I mean that with kindness and absolutely no disrespect to......myself. I am a transplant but I've lived here long enough to know where my bread is buttered and unfortunately I can't say the same for a good many of my neighbors. Because of this indisputable truth we face the possibility of a blackout for Sunday's Chargers/Chiefs game if 1300 tickets aren't sold by tomorrow. San Diego may have a resident pool of over 1 million but that figure does not ring true for the Charger fan base. So what to do? The Union Tribune's Jay Posner proposed the following in his media column this morning:

What better weekend could there be for the Spanos family to buy the remaining tickets, donate them to some worthy causes (military, fire, police, youth groups, etc.) and give all of Southern California a huge thank you for its support over the years? After all, coming off years of ineptitude, the Chargers have sold out every game since 2004 and TV ratings are at their highest point in too many years to count.

I'm sure the Chargers could find a couple of sponsors to join up, and they could hit up KFMB Channel 8, which must be making gobs of money off those huge ratings. But even if they couldn't, so what?

Sure, it's easy for me to spend the Spanoses' money, but we're really not talking about that much cash. To a fan or a sponsor, the cost would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $225,000 — 3,000 tickets at about $75 a pop. But the Chargers' cost wouldn't be nearly that high, because the club wouldn't actually “buy” the tickets. Instead, the Chargers would have to pay only the 34 percent of each ticket that goes into a pool the league later distributes equally to all teams (so they'd get back 1/32nd of the money).

Thirty-four percent of $225,000 is $76,500. But that doesn't factor in that some of those 3,000 extra fans would pay $25 to park, plus all of them would figure to spend at least $10 — and probably much more, given the prices — at the concession stands.

See, it's really not that outrageous, is it? Shoot, the Chargers could almost make a profit by doing this.

Sounds good to me and I would venture a guess that either the Chargers or Channel 8 will pick up the tab when the bell tolls tomorrow.

Hey I wish I were going...... but I was in Denver last week and have already been to one pre-season and two regular season home games. Balancing the budget to make it to another game this year will be difficult ( //hoping for playoffs) so It is my want that reason prevails and someone ponies up the $260 K to ensure that I can sit on my couch and see the 50 greatest Chargers honored this Sunday.

Make it happen, ye with deep pockets!