I'm a former lifelong fan of the San Diego NFL team... which of as this morning ceased to exist. I've never been a 'free agent' fan before, so this is all new to me. What should I do? Figure out something better to do on Sundays? Buy Aztec season tickets? Not have a favorite team? Pick a new one? Pick a few?

FYI: This is a zero politics content thread. The only rule is have fun !!!1!

i like ball on foot and pie from apples

Didn't they start out as the LA Chargers?

Become a Browns fan and start rooting for them to cease existing.

Pick the team that you're able to get to the most games for. Although your country is inconveniently large for actually following a team, I imagine. If the Blades went bust there'd most likely be a movement to start a new team and work up from scratch. Failing that I'd pick any local club that isn't Wednesday. The idea of a city the size of San Diego not having a team seems dumb.

Come to the Cowboys OP, we have the best cheerleaders!!!

Full Diclosure: I have not watched a full Cowboys game in at least 5 years, likely many more

FREE ToothSayer!!

Well, it's complicated.

Pro football has a tradition of recycling names, and putting teams on hiatus. Examples: New York Titans and Tennessee Titans, Dallas Texans and Houston Texans, Cleveland Browns between 1996 and 1998. Very loosely speaking, there have been three teams called the Chargers. In chronological order, these are...

• The Los Angeles Chargers. The Los Angeles Chargers were a charter member of the AFL. In 1960 they played in the LA Coliseum. At that time the Dodgers were the prime tenant, playing 77 home games and drawing 2.3 million fans. It's always been USC's home field. UCLA and the Rams called it home then too. The LA Chargers were the fifth wheel. They struggling to draw 10k in the then 100k Coliseum. The team was successful on the field, going 10-4 and winning the Western Division. However, even though they had the home field advantage, their embarrassing inability to sell seats led then to punt. Instead they travelled to Houston for the championship game, where they lost to the now defunct Oilers 16-24 in long gone Jeppesen Stadium.
  
  After that turbulent season, the LA Chargers were placed on hiatus for the 1961-2016 seasons. Yesterday, that team came off hiatus, and announced they'll resume play during the 2017 season in Carson, Los Angeles Co. There, they'll play second fiddle to a soccer team (ZOMG !!!1!), and struggle to draw 10k at the 30k StubHub Center.
  
  
• The San Diego Chargers. Also known as "The Bolts". This team existed during the 1961-2016 seasons. They played their home games at Balboa Stadium, and later at the Q. Yesterday, the Evil Carpetbagging Spanos Family maliciously murdered this team. May they rot in hell.
  
  
• During the 1987 season a buncha reprobates, truly the scum of the earth, went around the country impersonating the Bolts. This gang of scabs didn't have the guts to show their faces in San Diego. This farce continued for three games. May they rot in the hell.

Pittsburgh Steelers

Two very stable franchises.

Packers

The Browns are unique in our major North American leagues in that they can't be killed. The Evil Carpetbagging Modell family gave it a good try back in 1995... but the Browns rose Rasputin-like from dead three years later.

Sounds like a Scythian task... which is something us San Diego sports fans are quite comfortable with, being the only major city without a major championship.

I'd really be interested in what Browns fans did during the 1996-1998 hiatus. Are there any Browns fans ITF ??

Steelers fans are *******s 97.6% of the time, you don't want to be associated with them.

I'm going to chalk this up to the differences between the relegation system and the franchise system. My Wikipedia shallow understanding is this:

The NFL has 32 teams, and currently does business in 29 markets. The last team to go out of business was the NFL Dallas Texans (not to be confused with the AFL Dallas Texans, who are now the Chefs). The last expansion was the Houston Texans in 2002. The expansion fee at that time was $700M.

Two even larger cities, Los Angeles (#2) and Houston (#5), both didn't have NFL teams recently.

You should invest some time in a new life.

In STL here, so in a similar situation. I've gone with the approach of not having a favorite team and just watching best game available.

Yeah, I legit have no idea when it comes to NFL aside from losing a Superb Owl sweepstake once a year. Think I had Panthers or something.

The FA set up has four "professional" leagues (though some teams in the fifth rank are full pro these days), and below the fifth rank divisions are organised regionally. Still seems weird that there are fewer teams than states.

Lighten up man. We're trying to have little bit of fun here. Quite frankly I think you need to get a life if you are wrapped up in the 24/7 news cycle 24/7 or anywhere even remotely close to that. How many angles are there to the DNC getting hacked story at tbe end of the day? Are TRUMP and Putin really in cahoots? We'll find out soon enough. Do hou really care all that much about what Facebook does about "fake news?' I should care if TRUMP slammed a CNN reporter?

I heard Pew just came out with a poll that stated only about 1/3 of Americans could name a TRUMP cabinet nominee. Is thst a good thing or a bad thing? I'll say one thing it indicates to me, it indicates that not that many are very engaged in the inside the beltway tomfoolery we have going in this country.

I'll take this as a vote to find something else to do on Sundays.

This is a good point to clarify things by mudding the waters. There are, I guess, really three interrelated questions here...

1. In general, how do peeps pick a favorite team. Why do they bother? For those who switch teams, WTF BBQ ???/?
   
2. Same Qs as a San Diegan. Or, from the context of any other particular place.
   
3. Same Qs for me personally. Or, for you personally.

You root for the team where you are from, or who your father roots for. If there is no team where you are from you can root for anyone. Sometimes people root for a particular player and hence root for that team.

In your case you should root for the LA chargers.

I feel your pain. I do realize St.Louis has been raped twice by the NFL owners. Please excuse me while I vent a bit.

With one MLB exception, no other team relocation has been more brutal than what the Evil Carpetbagging Spanos Family just did. None are even close to being in the same ballpark. I read an article yesterday ranking this #7 worst of all time. A coupla days ago that would have really annoyed me... now I just gotta laugh.

OK, I'm back. I have a question for you: how divisive has it been between those who are now LA Rams fans -vs- those who burned their St.L Rams gear?

Barring doing something else on Sundays, this is the most obvious choice. I gave this option a lot of consideration. Another subtly different option I considered is to say I'm a fan of the San Diego Bombers, or remain a BoltHead (but never a fan of that LA team).

A lot depends on what kinda fan you are. Picking a favorite team is always going to be a different strokes for different folks thingee. If you are a live-n-die for your team fan, it's better not to have one. Otherwise it's a freeroll... if they win, you win; if they lose, oh well. If you are a deep fan it doesn't matter... you're going to watch all the games anyways. If you feel a need to buy gear, besides needing help, you need a favorite to know what gear to buy.

I'm a deep freerolling fan who occasionally buys gear, but never NFL gear. However, I do go on sportscations (Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix last year), do have a stadium bucket list, and routinely visit the City of the Angels for games.

The rub for me is this: If I claim a team as my favorite, am I committing myself to occasionally go see them, and adding their home field to my bucket list ??

Have to remember the US doesn't have all its eggs in one sports basket. Some of our states most likely couldn't support a major sports team. Some it doesn't make sense to because an established franchise or franchises are in close proximity. We also have college sports which help make up for the areas without professional teams. In reality we have hundreds of professionals teams and thousands of sports teams when you count all the semi pro and collegiate teams. That's not even counting the local teams that slums like myself play trying to relive high school and college glory days.

These are two good points for our non-USAian friends.

North American sports are fundamentally city centric. Not state centric, and certainly not centered around this dual-status national team crapola. Also, we're not like AU, where every city has it's own state... instead, pretty much nobody lives in some of our states, while others have multiple major cities.

Second, the top of college football (FBS), and men's college basketball (Div I), are major leagues, so to speak, in their own rights. This is an only in the USA phenom. Nothing compares to the NFL of course, but FBS laps the NBA and NHL. The "Final Four" waffle crushes the NBA finals.

This is why I mentioned in my OP the option of buying (FBS San Diego State) Aztec season tickets. We don't need no stinkin NFL. I can buy season tickets to the Aztecs for less than it'd cost me to go to a single Rams game. This is why LA did more than just fine during the NFLs long absence. Hell, I'm thoroughly convinced that the reason the NFL didn't move to LA during the P.Carroll era, was that USC would have crushed them like a bug... off the field, and maybe even on.

I'm already a bigger FBS fan than a NFL fan, and have been for while now. Ironically, that's what led me to reject the "find something else to do on Sunday" option. To me, it doesn't make any sense to be a FBS fan without being a fan of the game... but you can't really be a fan of the game if you ignore the next level up, the best of the best, who play that game.

Yes for our foreign friends that visit the USA, do try and visit the Western part of the USA. The vastness of states in the Mountain time zone is something you may surprised at.

Wyoming is a huge state land area wise but has a population of less than 600,000.

MissileDog, do you remember the old AFL days, with John Hadl and Lance Alworth etc.? I was a huge Oakland Raiders fan as a kid, from the late 60s on. I remember those Chargers teams well.

I was very young, but yes I do... #21 to #19, touchdown !!!1!

L.Alworth and P.Rivers are my only 'favorite' footballers. I went to the Titans game last season, which was also old timers day. I was quite disappointed that L.Alworth had to cancel his appearance at the last moment. There will never be another NFLer known as "Bambi".

OP, this isn't like the Cardinals moving from STL to Arizona, this is pretty close. It's like the 49ers moving to Santa Clara but nobody cared because they are still called San Fran. It's a pretty short drive to go see them, you should remain a Charger fan. If they had moved to Portland then I'd say pick a new team.