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Confessions of a Charger fan
Topics: Sports, football, Chargers
Anonymous user Tue Nov 30, 1999 00:00:00 PST
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0 responses 0 comments My wedding vows included words like “faithful” and “loyal,” but my wife has always said I proved my fidelity the day I told her I was a fan of the San Diego Chargers. 
After all, if one can stay loyal to a football team that continually finds ways to break your heart, marriage should be a breeze.
My beloved Chargers have always been rather enigmatic — flirting with success one season, sinking into the depths the next. Highs and lows abound, with some moments that have left me breathless, and others that have left me shaking my head.
If being a football fan can be compared to existing in a relationship, then life as a Charger fan would be like being in a severely dysfunctional one. Full of letdowns, false promises and a naïvely myopic belief that next year is going to be different. I can almost hear Dr. Phil in my head, chiding me to accept the reality that some teams just don’t win.
I vividly recall the last big Charger playoff victory — a game played in Pittsburgh 12 years ago. My father, the most avid football fan I had ever known, had recently been admitted to the hospital, so we decided to watch the game together in his hospital room.
As the game ended with a dramatic Charger victory in the closing seconds, I jumped and screamed so loudly that the room was instantly filled with doctors and nurses expecting a medical emergency. Embarrassed, I sheepishly explained “the Chargers are going to the Super Bowl!”
They were not impressed.
Ironically, this year really was different, and my Chargers, for the first time in their history, headed to the playoffs with the league’s best record. Most football analysts were convinced they were championship-bound.  Although experience has made me skeptical of such “experts,” I nevertheless received my playoff tickets with the jubilation of a 7-year-old on Christmas. I was going to be there, front row, to watch their march to the Super Bowl.
The day began so different from years past.
The deep freeze in Bakersfield had frozen all the gutters as we crept out of town at dawn. There seemed to be a layer of ice over Pyramid Lake as we crossed over the Grapevine. The order from Starbucks was extra delicious.
Everything about the morning foreshadowed a singularly amazing afternoon. Surely this day wouldn’t end with every losing team’s mantra of  “Maybe next year.”
I’ve been to playoff games of every major sport, but nothing compares to the energy I felt in the stadium that day.
There was almost a feeling that the players on the field were irrelevant — that all of us in the seats could make this happen by sheer will alone.
Unfortunately, a day that began so different ended all too familiar — with a Chargers collapse and a stunning loss that somehow will still manage to stand out amongst a history of stunning losses.  The parking lot was eerily quiet as more than 65,000 fans roamed slowly to their cars, muttering softly to themselves or simply staring at the scoreboard in disbelief.
Friends, who normally would have been lighting up my cellular like a Christmas tree to tease me about the loss, somehow knew to leave me alone. It’s probably a good thing I had a five-hour drive home to put it all in perspective.
Yes, I know it’s just a game, and there are a billion “real” problems in the world that make this seem almost silly. My family, my home and my job were still waiting for me when I came back to town.  The sun somehow managed to rise.
An old friend once made an odd observation about society that has stuck with me over the years. He commented that the only thing more puzzling than our tendency to escalate our simple games to life-and-death importance is our equally frequent tendency to minimize true life-and-death scenarios by referring to them in sports metaphors.
I’m not sure what this says about society. Are we taking sports too seriously or our lives not seriously enough? Perhaps it is a coping mechanism of sorts. Life is full of gray areas, and in sport, we can find a black-and-white, us-versus-them clarity that doesn’t exist in the real world — for a few hours at least.
And as for my San Diego Chargers — well, there’s always next year.

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