“If your friends told you to jump off a cliff, would you do it?” - Quote from The Handbook of Mom Cliches
There’s no pressure like peer pressure. Face it, very few of us can stand up to a large group of our friends all giving us the same advice. This could be very good news for football fans in San Diego.
The peers of Dean Spanos are his 31 fellow NFL owners and commissioner Roger Goodell. And according to Kevin Acee from the San Diego Union-Tribune, Spanos is now feeling the pressure.
“Owners and even Roger Goodell have reached out to Dean Spanos and have implored him to stay in San Diego,” Acee said in a phone interview with 10News. “They’re selling Dean on the idea that while it is a low-risk proposition for him to go and be the Rams’ tenant in Inglewood, there’s not really a huge upside in Los Angeles.”
Spanos has long been viewed as a “team player” in NFL circles, and it seems unlikely he’d defy the advice of his peers to go to a market where no one is rolling out the welcome mat.
Still, Acee cautions that NFL owners won’t stand in the way if Spanos has already made up his mind. “They’re not telling him he can’t go, but they’re telling him he shouldn’t go.”
The decision will now likely hinge on the Raiders’ proposed move to Las Vegas. If the path remains clear for the Silver & Black to head to Sin City at a special NFL owners committee meeting in New York on Wednesday, the Chargers could receive assurances that the Raiders won’t claim the second spot at the Rams stadium in Inglewood.
Even ESPN’s Jim Trotter, who has been highly skeptical of the Chargers’ chances of staying in San Diego since the November election, offered an encouraging outlook on Twitter:
Knowledgeable NFL people are telling me a Hail Mary is developing to keep the Chargers in SD at least two more years. I hope they're right.
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) January 10, 2017
Said one source: "The league views SD as salvageable. Oakland is not." Hence, tomorrow's meeting to clear a path for Raiders to Vegas.
— Jim Trotter (@JimTrotter_NFL) January 10, 2017
So jump off that cliff, friends. Peer pressure could end up keeping the Chargers in San Diego.
