Author Topic: Good article on Charger Fans (Read 354 times)

Bay Area Jat · « **on:** January 15, 2007, 12:20:44 PM »

January 14, 2007

San Diego abuzz over Chargers
''Belichick's team is aging and on its way out.'' - Chargers fan George Quintana of Elko, Nev., in town for today's playoff game

By RUSS CHARPENTIER
STAFF WRITER
SAN DIEGO - This week, San Diego is a schizophrenic city.

Charger fans know their team has talent as least as good, and probably better, than any team in the NFL.

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They also know they have a coach, Marty Schottenheimer, who has a 5-12 playoff record. That's opposed to Bill Belichick's 12-2 postseason mark, 11-1 and three Super Bowl titles in New England, for those just returning from a five-year trip to Siberia.

The two teams, and coaches, clash this afternoon for a berth in next week's AFC Championship Game, and a possible Super Bowl appearance after that.

Charger fans are up, they are down. This is their year, then again. ...

It's kind of like Red Sox Nation, except many of these Charger fans are of that less-than-endearing ilk. They are, cue the horror music, bandwagon jumpers.

''At the beginning of the season, I didn't see any Charger fans,'' said Elizabeth Perry of Jamaica Plain, a junior and education major at San Diego State who happens to waitress at Junior Seau's sports bar in the Mission Valley section of the city, just a couple miles from Qualcomm Stadium. The bar was buzzing this week, many fans wearing LaDainian Tomlinson shirts and some even with lightning bolts painted on their cheeks. ''At the beginning of the season, there were Steeler fans and Raider fans.''

Seau was a legend when he played in San Diego, but the Chargers viewed him as too old and sent him packing four years ago. On he moved to Miami, then this year to New England, where he played well before breaking his arm. His restaurant is a playoff mecca for Charger fans, but a couple of his waitresses aren't feeling the powder blue joy.

''I'm loyal to my teams,'' said Perry. ''I'm wearing my Pats 55 jersey (Seau's number) Sunday.'' Then she laughed. ''There go my tips.''

We also found a Cape connection at Junior's. Amy Lowe, Falmouth High Class of '01, is also waitressing there, taking some time after earning her psychology degree from Cal-Davis. Considering her mother, father, brother and sister are all doctors, we suspect there's more education in her future. For now, she's enjoying San Diego and enduring Charger fans.

Asked how they compare to Patriot fans, she hesitated. ''Boston's pretty intense,'' said Lowe, who admits to being more of a baseball fan than football follower. ''They say there are Charger fans out there. ...'' Lowe was going to join Perry in wearing a Patriots jersey today, but said she couldn't find one in San Diego. So she's dug out one of her Red Sox jerseys.

''The Patriots are going to win,'' she said. ''You always have to root for the Red Sox and Patriots. But if the Chargers win, I'll root for them the rest of the way.''

That's pretty much San Diego in a nutshell. Like Cape Cod, most everyone is from somewhere else. When I asked a taxi driver this week whether there were many native San Diegans, he chuckled and shook his head. ''Not many.''

The press has helped feed this San Diego schizophrenia. One San Diego Union-Tribune columnist wrote this week, ''It's easy to get the feeling that, if Belichick coached the Chargers instead of the Patriots, San Diego would be favored by 397 points.''

The main art on the front of the sports section that day was a gray, darkened and enlarged picture of Schottenheimer over a picture of the outside of the stadium, while a pretty, young woman from a horror movie, leaning back, hands up near her face, shrieks in fright as she stares up at the Chargers coach. The headline: ''TALES OF MARTYBALL, Coach's playoff record STRIKES FEAR IN FANS.'' Pure horror movie stuff, and yes, that is the Charger fan's worst fear.

Not this year, said Craig Withers, one of those with lightning bolts decorating his cheeks. ''I think if New England doesn't play their absolute best it has no chance. If the Patriots play their best and the Chargers just play average of less, the Patriots have a chance. But this is our year.'' Withers is originally from Iowa, but has had Charger season tickets for 10 years. ''I moved here the year after the Chargers went to the Super Bowl in '94,'' he said. ''I heard about the excitement. I think this surpasses it. This city is crazy over this team now. Everybody is supporting it.'' Again, it's all relative. Compared to Boston, ... well, what does compare to the Boston pro sports atmosphere? Not much.

Withers is striving to become a 50-state marathoner by his 50th birthday. Now 46, he's run in 14 states in 1½ years, including a race in Rhode Island last October.

''I was standing in Providence Airport the last time the Chargers lost (Oct. 22). All the TVs had the Patriots game on, and I was trying to read the small scores they put on the screen. When it came over, the Chiefs had beaten the Chargers on a last-second field goal, I screamed and everybody looked at me. That was 10 wins ago.''

There have been pep rallies during the week - at the downtown House of Blues and in the parking lot of Qualcomm Stadium. They say there were 5,000 fans Wednesday at the stadium.

Qualcomm will be rocking today, without a doubt, full of earnest fans and bandwagon jumpers. You just wonder, if the Patriots get ahead, how loyal the newfound fans will remain?

There are definitely Charger zealots who earned their colors.

Three of those were in Junior's Friday - George Quintana, Adam Lujan and Josh Garcia. Ardent Charger fans, all in their 30s, they were all decked out in team gear after traveling from their hometown of Elko, Nev. Members of the Chargers fan club, they bought tickets offered by the team to club members. ''Then we sweet-talked our wives into letting us go,'' said Garcia, an electrician at a gold mine. ''It's all going to hinge on (San Diego quarterback) Philip Rivers, because the Patriots are going to key on Tomlinson.''

Lori Rios is a mortgage lender in San Diego and a huge fan who makes many games. Unfortunately, she's not paying the scalper demands of more than $1,000 a ticket for this one. She makes the Chargers sound like the Patriots of 2001.

''They've got a team effort going, they're not playing like individuals,'' she said. ''L.T. says it's all about team.''

Jeremy Flint lives in San Diego, having moved here from San Francisco, where he grew up with the Montana and Young 49ers. He's seen a lot of games, and likes this Chargers team. But he looks at this week's hullabaloo and knows the truth about San Diego.

''In 2002, when the Packers came here, this place was like Lambeau West,'' he said.

Now, Chargers mania has taken hold. It just takes a few wins to get that bandwagon rocking.

Pam, who wouldn't give her last name, was with a group of fellow Pacific Capitol Bank employees, including Withers, at Junior's. The bank had a Charger spirit day Friday, and she and all her co-workers were wearing some sort of team gear. She moved to San Diego from Chicago 15 years ago and switched allegiances from the Bears. She even has an autographed Tomlinson helmet and is rooting for a team that hasn't won a championship since routing the Patriots 51-10 for the 1963 American Football League title.

''It's time for it to happen,'' she said.

If that doesn't sound like a Red Sox fan, pre-2004, nothing does.

Russ Charpentier

can be reached at

rcharpentier@capecodonline.com.

(Published: January 14, 2007)