Chargers Release Statement to Mayor Regarding Stadium, Hint at Potential LA Exit

On the heels of San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer's new stadium task force being announced, the San Diego Chargers are giving the city a warning. 

Succeed, or else. 

Mark Fabiani, who serves as the team's leader on the stadium issue, published an extensive outline on the team's website directed at the mayor and the task force. Noting that the Alex Spanos family has spent more than $15 million in unsuccessful attempts to find the Chargers a new stadium over the last 14 years, Fabiani and his team are understandably concerned this newest task force will result in more failure. 

"It should not be enough to suggest a plan that might succeed under perfectly controlled laboratory conditions—but that is unlikely to succeed in the real world of San Diego politics," he wrote. 

Should the task force prove unsuccessful (a likely result, according to Fabiani, who claims there is currently no publicly acceptable solution to the stadium issue), the Chargers are "keeping a close eye on the developments in L.A."

In January, it was announced that St. Louis Rams owner Stan Kroenke had made plans to build an 80,000-seat stadium in Inglewood, California. That's a potentially crippling threat to the Chargers, according to Fabiani, seeing as how 25 percent of their ticket base hails from the L.A./Orange County market.

He put it simply:

"

It would not be fair to the Chargers—a team that has worked for 14 years to find a stadium solution in San Diego County—to allow other teams that themselves abandoned the LA market to now return and gut the Chargers' local revenue stream.

We do not have a choice but to also monitor and evaluate our options (in LA). Simply put, it would be irresponsible for the Chargers not to be taking every possible step to protect the future of the franchise.

"

Bleacher Report's Jason Cole provided a copy of a letter that Fabiani also wrote to the mayor's office, noting that it's quite obvious the relationship between the two sides is not a healthy one: 

Fabiani and the Chargers seem to have little belief a legitimate stadium proposal is even possible at this point. He said the team is continuing to work to find a solution, but with Los Angeles being a market that will likely see a new team sooner rather than later, it would appear the Chargers' future in San Diego is murky at best. 

"As the mayor said, the situation in Los Angeles has never been more real," said Adam Day, chairman of the advisory group, via the Los Angeles Times' Sam Farmer. 

It's safe to say the pressure is on for the new task force.