Ever since Shad Khan bought the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2011 and moved one home game a year to London, there’s been talk about the billionaire car parts baron and Fulham F.C. owner either wanting to move the team there permanently, or use the threat of moving there to get upgrades to his now-24-year-old home stadium in Jacksonville, or something. This past weekend, Khan gave a long interview to his own website, as one does, and said a bunch of stuff about the matter that, well:
Khan … discussed the continuing trend of holding megaevents at TIAA Bank Field. The Rolling Stones played there in July, and Green Day is expected to play there as part of The Hella Mega Tour in 2020.
“What’s driven this for us is we want to give the community a different experience,” Khan said. “Obviously football … there is a limited demand for it. That’s why we’re playing the games here in London — that the community can’t support selling out eight games, so maybe there’s something else we can do there for the hot-dog vendors, the hotel rooms, all the stakeholders who make a living off the game.”
Won’t anyone think of the hot dog vendors? (No hyphen, incidentally: With a hyphen, it would be vendors who were hotdogging.) Khan isn’t trying to make more money by maintaining a foothold in London or anything so crass as that; he’s just trying to … leave more open dates for Rolling Stones and Green Day shows, I guess, because 355 days a year just isn’t enough?
And then:
“If we are playing a game away, we want to have one mega-experience. That kind of makes up for that from our viewpoint. If we’re playing more than one, we would want to have a couple or more.”
This last sentence may be my favorite quote about anything of all time. Does Shad Khan live in a mathematical world where there are cardinal numbers in between 1 and 2? What would football even look like in such a mathematical universe?
But anyway: News4Jax — look, you can’t expect me to stop and make fun of everything, there’s actual news to get to here — took these odd statements and summed them up with the headline “Jaguars owner Shad Khan hints at need for new stadium.” Did he, though? The closest the Khan interview actually came to mentioning a new stadium for Jacksonville was a mention that Jaguars president Mark Lamping “noted that three teams currently also in the bottom quartile in those rankings – the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers and Oakland Raiders – are scheduled to move into new stadiums in 2020,” which seems a bit of an oblique way of demanding a new stadium yourself, but I guess it could qualify as “hints,” if you overlook the fact that Khan wasn’t the one saying it. Maybe he’s a car parts billionaire/sports team owner/groundbreaking mathematician/ventriloquist? I’m going with that.
If he is saying that there isn’t enough demand for 8 games in Jacksonville, doesn’t that sound more like wanting to move the team? Especially with the talk of the Chargers needing a new home?
I am a Steeler fan who watched the Steelers/Chargers Game on TV, and LA was basically Heinz Field West. The Chargers move to LA was and (still is) a mistake, so would a full NFL Schedule in London (assuming the Players Association allows it, which is no certainty). Why? Start with travel, then local fan interest beyond the novelty of a game or two every year, then see how many top flight players actually WANT to play there? It will make playing for the Pirates, Marlins, or Winnipeg Jets look like playing for the Yankees, Cowboys or Lakers. The best thing that could happen is Spanos sell the team and have the Chargers move back to San Diego, if not move the Chargers to St Louis: Basically lose the Rams to LA, and take the Chargers from LA (not that LA would care).
Qualcomm was outdated in the 80s and San Diego couldn’t put a deal together to replace it. If the Chargers had gone alone they may have had a chance but 2 teams in LA was a stupid idea, St Louis makes sense as their was a deal there for the taking. Otherwise Toronto makes more sense than London does