Hate-Watching the Chargers
A Father trains the next generation of anti-Chargers fans in San Diego
The other night, I took a moment to provide some NFL education to my boys, ages 11 and 13. Anytime I mention a player I watched in my youth, the inevitable question arises: “Was he good?” Oh yes, young man, he was good…and through the magic of the Interwebs, we head to YouTube.
But this night was a more general category. Let’s watch some awesome runs! We started with Marshawn Lynch’s epic rumble against the New Orleans Saints in the 2011 playoffs.
Then, our next dive took us to a gem…Top 100 runs in NFL history.
There were great ones that made my boys marvel. Walter Payton leaping over defenders. Barry Sanders playing hide-and-seek with the Cowboys. Billy Sims ninja-kicking a safety. Jim Brown stiff arms.
Then, a Clinton Portis 20-yard run against the Chargers. And my youngest son’s response intrigued me. As Portis made Chargers defenders look ridiculous, my son laughed. Not a “look-at-how-silly-those-defenders-look” kind of laugh. More a “serves-you-right-for-leaving-our-city, I’ll-never-root-for-you-again” laugh.
I realized…my son is hate-watching the Chargers. He’s not actively doing it every Sunday. He’s hate-watching them on a YouTube video from a game That Had Already Been Played! At a time when, if he was conscious of the NFL, he would have been rooting for the Chargers.
Admittedly, I am not, and never was, a Chargers fan. I was more of a Chargers acquaintance…I liked the jerseys, loved the Dan Fouts/John Jefferson/Kellen Winslow era (as I show my age), but if they played the Rams or Oilers, the Chargers took a back seat.
I have now lived in San Diego for over 20 years, and my acquaintanceship with the Chargers continued. I had friends who were devout fans, and I like my friends, so I wanted the Chargers to win so my friends would be happy. But mostly I would watch or listen every Sunday wondering in what creative way the Chargers would lose this game. And like the creative death scenes in the movie Apocalypto, they came up with a new and original way to lose more often than not.
Now, though, I amaze myself at how much I revel in their failures. When a team leaves a city, if you are in any way tied to that location, it is like a piece of you left, even if you were not that big a fan. It surprised me, and surprised me more that my kids felt the same way, and they have not lived and died with the Chargers nearly as much as many of you.
So now we hunt YouTube, looking for Charger failures. It is not an active search, but when it comes up in the Suggested Videos, we’ll watch, we’ll laugh derisively, and we’ll keep rooting for the best city in America and the teams that choose to play here.