Since the Chargers were yanked out of San Diego by Dean Spanos a large number of fans in America’s Finest City have tried to find ways to voice their displeasure with the move.
The most vocal and active member of the San Diego Chargers fan insurgency has been Joseph MacRae, also known as S.D. Sign Guy. He has made a name for himself by being a constant thorn in the side of Dean Spanos (he’s the one who heckled Deano at a Chargers rally in L.A. and visibly flustered the Bolts chairman).
Through a GoFundMe campaign MacRae was able to raise $10,000 from more than 300 donors to put up a digital billboard along the 405 South just before the Main Street exit on the east side of the street. That’s about a mile away from the StubHub Center in Carson, where the Chargers will be playing their “home” games for three years.
On that billboard will be five different images, all with a very direct message for the Spanos family and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who is complicit in the franchise relocation to Los Angeles. They look like this:
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Each image will be seen about 1,000 times a day for the next three weeks. A big part of MacRae’s motivation for this was to get on the nerves of Dean Spanos.
“I think we did,” said MacRae. “Nobody wants to drive down the freeway about a mile away from your so-called intimate experience stadium and have a billboard that’s making fun of you and your two sons (John and A.G. Spanos, both employees of the Chargers front office) that you’re apparently fighting for L.A. but L.A. doesn’t want you. So I think we got to him.”
His message is resonating with fans from other cities that have had franchises leave and share in the pain of Chargers fans in San Diego.
“I went on a couple of talk radio stations in Seattle and St. Louis,” said MacRae. “They are very thankful for what I’m doing. They totally understand.”
MacRae’s billboard blast has hit the mainstream media. The story has been told on multiple outlets across the country and even in to Europe. News organizations in England, Germany and Italy have reported on it.
Not all the reaction has been positive. There are people who think this is a wildly petty waste of resources and want Sign Guy to just move on. But everyone is dealing with this move in a different way and he’s not ready to let it go just yet.
“I guess you could say this is Phase 1,” said MacRae. “We’re just getting started and getting things going. People who tell me to get over it or whatever, I’m just more motivated to get out there and do more things.”
MacRae would like nothing more than to have the NFL force Spanos to sell the team to another owner that takes the team back home. If that happens, he says, he’ll make another billboard praising the new owner as “the most popular man or woman in San Diego.”
