To say that Qualcomm Stadium is the best NFL stadium in California is, as a friend used to say, like bragging about being the tallest midget in the circus. It’s a serviceable stadium, no doubt — one good enough to host Super Bowls in the past — but it’s showing it’s age, and the Chargers have been sniffing around for ways to replace it for years. Still, it’s the best place in California to watch a pro football game (if we included colleges, it would be a whole different story) because its two competitors up north play in stadiums either haphazardly configured for football or ruined by additions that detracted from the venue’s overall feel. (Really, the 49ers and Raiders need to put their heads together, go the Giants-Jets route and build one nice new stadium that they can share… but I digress.)
As I’ve mentioned too many times to count previously, I attended the Chargers’ divisional playoff game against the Jets with Mrs. Fan and our friend Jersey Boy, a big Jets fan. It was my first Chargers game in more than 10 years — so long that the last time I saw them live, Craig Whelihan was the starting quarterback. Who’s Craig Whelihan, you ask? I’ll just say that the whole Ryan Leaf mess the franchise endured in the late 1990s resulted in Craig Whelihan being the starting quarterback, and I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from there.
Itinerant Fan 