Gutless Chargers Bar Ticket Sales to Patriots Fans

Chargers Afraid?
Lebowski: Agression Will Not Stand

Please note: The San Diego Chargers are the only AFC West team with no represnetation on Sports Blogs Nation. Go figure.

The San Diego Chargers are refusing to sell tickets to anyone not living within certain zip codes in an effort to keep New England Patriots fans out of the stadium for Sunday's Divisional Playoff matchup.

The move can be called only one thing: Gutless.

Patriots fans -- the excessively rich or those who don't mind going without heat or food for a month -- can still get tickets from the ticket broker leech-sharks (or are they shark-leeches?) or on auction sites. But the whole think reeks more of Communism than Capitalism.

This past Sunday in Gillette Stadium, there were sizable pockets of New York Jets fans. We gave them a hard time, for sure -- some game them a much harder time -- but we welcomed them to our beautiful stadium, stood side-by-side during the game, and to be certain there was plenty of trash talk until the fourth quarter. But when it was over, we shook hands. They wished us luck in the playoffs, and we wished them luck next year.

I know how difficult it is to get tickets, and, yes, I wish more Patriots fans had been able to buy those ticks and enjoy the game. But it appears the Chargers don't have the fan base to buy the 1,000 tickets that went on sale.

Jay Fitzgerald, an economics reporter for the Boston Herald, says that the blackout indicates a "lack of support" on behalf of the Charger fans. According to experts (whoever they are) Fitzgerald consulted, "The fact that the Chargers had any box-office playoff tickets available less than a week before a playoff game indicates the team doesn't have deep support in its region."

So what? What does the Charger fans lack of support have to do with punishing Patriots fans? If there are no Charger fans, why would Patriots fans be penalized?

This brings up a bigger issue with the Chargers, in general, who are still advertising season ticket sales, while the waiting list is 15 years in New England. That's why Las Vegas and other cities are trying to lure the Chargers from a wasteland of sports fanaticism.

That doesn't change that the Chargers are afraid of us, the best fans of the best team in the best league. (But it does explain their lack of representation on the largest sports blog network in the country.)

The Chargers told The Boston Globe that they'll restrict AFC Championship tickets next week -- if they're lucky enough to beat the Patriots.

Oddly enough, this policy didn't apply to the regular season games. But, really, do you think they were afraid of being invaded by fans from St. Louis? Or Cleveland? Or Arizona?

The gutless Chicago Bears employed a similar policy to keep out those rowdy Seattle Seahawks fans this weekend.

The two teams with the best records in each conference. Totally afraid. Totally pathetic.

The league says there's nothing wrong with what the Chargers are doing. Of course. The league always says there's nothing wrong when something is detrimental to the Patriots or their fans, right?

Whether the league says they can do it or whether lawyers say it's legal, it's not right. Discrimination is discrimination. And as Jeff Lebowski, paraphrasing President George Bush (No. 41), said in "The Big Lebowski", "This will not stand, man. This aggression will not stand."

By the way, Patriots spokesman Stacey James said our team has never restricted ticket sales. We don't have to.

No fear.