The San Diego Chargers may not stay in San Diego for much longer -- though their future is not clear as many fans had hoped for after an NFL owners vote Tuesday.
The St. Louis Rams will move to Los Angeles, and the Chargers will have the option to join them. To read the full story about the decision, click here.
Going into the vote, the NFL's Los Angeles relocation committee now had two options left on its ballot: Either the San Diego Chargers and Oakland Raiders move to Carson or the Chargers relocate with the St. Louis Rams to Inglewood. In either scenario, it looked like the Chargers would be leaving San Diego, NBC 7 SportsWrap's Derek Togerson reports.
The committee officially endorsed a proposed stadium in Carson by a 5-1 margin Tuesday as owners begin deliberating the fate of the Chargers, Raiders and Rams.
All three teams have been eyeing a move to the lucrative Los Angeles market. The Chargers have played in San Diego for 55 seasons but filed for relocation to LA because the team believes the City of San Diego is unable to get the public funding needed to replace the aging Qualcomm Stadium.
NFL owners meeting in Houston will vote on whether to approve the St. Louis Rams Inglewood proposal or the San Diego Chargers/Oakland Raiders joint Carson project as the best opportunity for the league's success in LA.
As of 12:30 p.m. PT, all presentations were complete.
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Disney CEO Bob Iger shared some of his creative vision for the Carson proposal. His involvement has apparently helped swing support from the L.A. Relocation Committee in their favor.
The six-owner committee endorsed the Carson site by a 5-1 margin but those votes are not official when it comes to the final tally. Each of the owners on the committee will have to vote again on the ballot for relocation.
Typically the ownership group goes along with whatever a specific committee suggests, but this case is unique because of the opposition.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has submitted a written proposal that would put the Rams and Chargers together as equity partners in Inglewood. If that proposal gets enough traction, and given the power Jones has among the owners that is a real possibility, it will go on the official ballot along with the other possibilities.
“This is a little bit different because you don’t typically see a competition among the owners like this,” says Vincent Bonsignore of the Los Angeles Daily News, who has been at the forefront of L.A. stadium coverage. “So we’ll have to see. Is the committee’s recommendation going to win the day or it just six votes among 32 votes?”
It is possible that the vote is held on Tuesday, although not expected. The most likely timeline is for the presentations to be completed Tuesday but negotiations and attempts to influence one side or another to continue up to a vote on Wednesday.
NBC 7's Derek Togerson walks through several scenarios here.
