When Super Bowl XLIII ended, a collective belch -- sans Drinkability -- echoed from Tampa Bay all the way to Super Bowl-snubbed San Diego Bay.
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Sure, that Raymond James Stadium is a looker. How about the pirate ship harbored in Buccaneer Cove? It was created by Disney. When Tampa Bay scores during home games, the cannons shoot seven times for a touchdown, three for a field goal. (A single blast signifies a cannon operator has caught a banking executive in his sights.)
San Diegans watch home pro football surrounded by the country’s second-largest parking lot while sitting inside a fish taco-shell-shaped bowl. (Relax, we chide the loudest those we most cherish.) Qualcomm Stadium landscaping includes -- ta-dah! -- a statue of a former sportswriter and his Labrador retriever. I could tell you the statue is made of Godiva chocolate, but that might cause a pigeon-borne outbreak of West Nile virus.
This is not advocacy for a new Chargers stadium at public expense. Leave that jawboning to team advocate Mark Fabiani and the executive scalawags of the NFL. The title game will not come back to San Diego because league honchos claim (wink, wink) Qualcomm is unacceptable. That grade came after we paid mucho dinero to fix it up for the 2003 Super Bowl.
Poppycock. Qualcomm may be Ugly Betty to the Gossip Girl that is Raymond James, but if the Q isn't a cover girl, she's simply different the way Cousin Marilyn was "different" on The Munsters.
Pre-2003, San Diego was promised a spot in a regular Super Bowl rotation. NFL: You yanked our city's collective chain. Watch yourself around the next cannon you pass.
I’m so mad, I’m going to boycott pro football -- at least for the next six months. Join me.
