. . . should I watch “60 Minutes” live and record the rest of the football game to watch it later? Grrrrrrrr.
[EDIT: An explanation is due. On the West Coast, Sunday Night Football begins after 5 pm, so it runs into the time that “60 Minutes” starts at 7 pm. Football fans who are already watching the game and also want to see “60 Minutes” have to make a choice on their viewing practices.]
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Unbelievably, I am currently without a team. I’m one of those San Diegans who took it as a betrayal that the Chargers left our city after a dispute about the taxpayers funding their new stadium. For years and years, the owner of the team, a multimillionaire, threatened the fans that if we didn’t pay to have a newer, more modern stadium built that was specifically for football, he’d pull up stakes and relocate after half a century in San Diego. As fans, we had gone through similar strong-arm tactics with our professional baseball team, the San Diego Padres. They shared the original stadium with the Chargers for decades, their owners wanted taxpayers to build a park for them that would be baseball-specific. It went to a vote to see if we were willing to spend our tax money on it, we voted it down, and the front office of the Padres got in bed with local politicians and ignored us, used tax money to build it anyway. That strapped us with higher taxes, yet the Padres haven’t turned out a better season or a truly winning season ever since. Viewing what happened with the Padres, we dug our heels in when the Chargers tried the same thing. By the way, the Chargers were barely putting out winning seasons either. The owners claimed that if they had a better stadium, they’d be a first-class winning team. We had heard the same thing about the Padres.
Millionaire owners who pay their players tens of million dollars a year can afford or should be able to afford to pay for their own facilities without greedily gouging the common folk. When the Chargers were trying to blackmail us, they weren’t winning games, so we weren’t falling for it then, and when they eventually left San Diego, they still haven’t had a winning season.
I believe you’re right; I don’t know their exact bottom lines, but they’re at least in the hundreds of millions.
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I decided to record “60 Minutes” because I found the game to be an action-packed plot-twister. Besides, watching a recorded football game isn’t as enthralling as watching it real time. Also, I was rooting for the Baltimore Ravens over the Cleveland Browns, and it worked out that way, final score 16 to 10.
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It’s not an East Coast issue, West Coast only.
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Honey Dew 