January 5, 1964: A Title for San Diego

Barron Hilton received the Los Angeles franchise of the AFL at its founding in 1959. He named the team the Chargers, after the credit card he founded, Carte Blanche. He was the son of hotel magnate Conrad Hilton, the brother of Elizabeth Taylor's 1st husband Conrad Nicholson Hilton Jr. a.k.a. Nicky Hilton, and the grandfather of Paris and Nicky Hilton. He turned out to be the last surviving member of "The Foolish Club," the 8 original AFL owners.

After reaching the 1st AFL Championship Game in the 1960 season, he realized that, even with his money, he couldn't compete with the NFL's Rams and college football's USC and UCLA for the attention of Los Angeles' football fans. So he moved the team down the Coast, and they became the San Diego Chargers. They reached the title game again in 1961, with the same result, losing to the Houston Oilers.

Head coach Sid Gillman built a high-powered offense, with 2 quarterbacks, Tobin Rote and John Hadl. Rote had filled in for an injured Bobby Layne, and led the Detroit Lions to victory in the 1957 NFL Championship Game, 59-10 over the Cleveland Browns. It was a bit of foreshadowing. Oddly, Hadl had also been drafted by the Lions, but the AFL offered more money than the NFL.

These passers' favorite target was Lance Alworth, whose running reminded someone of a deer, and so he was nicknamed "Bambi." He would end up as the 1st former AFL player elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. (Contrary to what some people believe, it's not the NFL Hall of Fame.) Gillman's offense also had running backs Paul Lowe and Keith Lincoln, tight end Jacque MacKinnon, guard Walt Sweeney, and offensive tackle Ron Mix. Mix would join Alworth in Canton.

But it was the defense that marked the '63 Chargers as being different from previous AFL teams. They were one of the teams in the 1960s that called its defensive line "The Fearsome Foursome": Ends Ron Nery and Earl Faison, and tackles Ernie Ladd (also a successful professional wrestler, before that competition became a scripted joke) and Bill Hudson. The linebackers were pretty good, too: Chuck Allen, Frank Buncom and Emil Karas.

Another distinctive feature of San Diego's 1st major league sports team was their uniforms. It wasn't just the lightning bolts on the helmets. From 1960 to 1973, they wore jerseys that had been called "collegiate blue" (probably a reference to UCLA, with whom they shared the Los Angeles Coliseum in 1960), "electric blue" (which matched the "charger" theme) and "powder blue" (which is what it usually gets called today).

The Chargers went 11-3, their only losses coming at the hands of the Denver Broncos and, twice, the Oakland Raiders. They won the AFL Western Division, which meant that, being that it was an odd-numbered year, they would get to host the AFL Championship Game at Balboa Stadium.

Their opponents were the Boston Patriots, who finished only 7-6-1, but that was good enough to tie the Buffalo Bills for 1st place in the Eastern Division. And 2 of the losses were to the Chargers. To be fair, 5 of the 6 losses were by 7 points or less, and the Pats did beat the Bills in Buffalo in a Playoff to get to the Championship Game.

The title game -- postponed a week, due to the postponement of the regular-season games of November 24, 1963, and that due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 2 days earlier -- would not be close. It turned out to be the biggest blowout in the 10-year history of AFL Championship Games. Since the 1970 merger with the NFL, only once has the winning team in the AFC Championship Game matched the Chargers' point total, the 1990-91 Buffalo Bills; and no team has surpassed it. No team has scored this many in the NFC Championship Game, either.

The Chargers wasted little time. Rote took a quarterback sneak for a touchdown. Lincoln scored on a 67-yard run. The Patriots scored on Larry Garron's 7-yard touchdown run, to close to within 14-7, but that was as close as they would get. Lowe ran 58 yards for a touchdown, and it was 21-7 San Diego after a quarter.

George Blair of the Chargers and Gino Cappelletti of the Patriots traded field goals in the 2nd quarter. But the fact that the Chargers were able to score 24 points in the 1st half, none of them on touchdown passes, was telling. Before the half ended, Rote threw a 14-yard touchdown pass to Don Norton, and it was 31-10.

Rote threw a 48-yard touchdown pass to Alworth in the 3rd quarter, and was relieved by Hadl in the 4th. But this proved not to be a mercy move by Gillman: Hadl threw a 25-yard touchdown pass to Lincoln, and later scored on a sneak. Final score: Chargers 51, Patriots 10. It remained the most dominating performance in the AFL's 10-year history.

The Chargers reached the Championship Game again in 1964 and 1965, losing to the Bills both times. The Kansas City Chiefs won the AFL title in 1966 and 1969; the Raiders in 1967; and the New York Jets in 1968. Each of these teams had a "Mad Bomber" quarterback -- Jack Kemp, Len Dawson, Daryle Lamonica and Joe Namath, respectively -- but each also followed the Chargers in the other way, too: The philosophy that "Defense wins championships."

Charger fans, and aficionados of the old AFL, are convinced that the Chargers could have beaten the NFL Champion Chicago Bears had there been a Super Bowl at the time. They are wrong: The Bears had a defense unlike any the AFL had yet seen, including on the Chargers.

The Chargers appeared in 5 of the 10 AFL Championship Games; the Oilers, 4; the Bills and the Chiefs, 3 each; the Raiders, 2; the Patriots and the Jets, 1 each; and the Denver Broncos, and the expansion Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals, none.

But the Chargers got old, and by 1973, as mentioned by the sportswriter character Oscar Madison on the TV series The Odd Couple, they and the Oilers were the 2 worst teams in the NFL. Alworth got a Super Bowl ring, but it was with the 1971-72 Dallas Cowboys.

In 1974, the Chargers switched to dark blue jerseys and helmets. In 1978, they became one of a few teams that preferred to wear white jerseys at home, and it did look better. They went back to dark blue at home in 1984, occasionally wore powder blue as "throwback uniforms" for a few years, and in 2019, their 60th season, they began wearing powder blue as their regular home color. They have also gone back to the white helmets.

The Chargers reached the 1981 AFC Championship Game, but lost it to the Bengals. They reached the 1994 AFC Championship Game, and beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in a thriller, but got clobbered by the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX. They reached the 2007 AFC Championship Game, but lost to the Patriots, revenge finally achieved.

In 1966, Barron Hilton sold the Chargers to Gene Klein. In 1984, Klein, who loved football but hated the business of it, sold the team to Alex Spanos. In his memoir, First Down and a Billion, he closed every chapter with the words, "Thank you, Alex."

In 1967, the Chargers moved to San Diego Stadium, which was renamed Jack Murphy Stadium in 1981 and Qualcomm Stadium in 1997. Spanos handed control of the team over to his son Dean in 1993, and Dean Spanos, a member of a billionaire family, continually demanded that either the City of San Diego or the County of San Diego use taxpayer money to build him a new stadium. He threatened to move the team back to Los Angeles, or perhaps to another city, if he didn't get the stadium.

A ballot initiative only got 43 percent of the vote, and so Dean proved he wasn't bluffing, and moved the team back to its original home. San Diego fans were angry, but seem to value their integrity more than their football team.  

The 1963 Chargers remain the only major league sports team in San Diego that has gone as far as the rules of the time have allowed them to go. The San Diego Padres have won National League Pennants in 1984 and 1998, but lost the World Series each time.

The city lost the NBA's Rockets (1967-71) to Houston and the NBA's Clippers (1978-84) to Los Angeles. It's never had an NHL team or an MLS team. The ABA's Conquistadors and the WHA's Mariners each folded before their respective leagues did. And neither the WFL (1974-75) nor the USFL (1983-85) saw fit to put a team in what was already being called "America's Finest City," despite the Chargers being in decline on both occasions, with the Don Coryell "Air Coryell" teams being successful in between.

The San Diego Sockers won the Major Indoor Soccer League title 10 times in 11 seasons from 1982 to 1992, but, despite its name, the MISL could hardly be called major league. The old North American Soccer League could have been called that, but the Sockers never got past the Semifinals.

There has been speculation of a "curse" on San Diego sports. The most common one is that it is the result of letting Alworth go after the 1970 season, hence "The Curse of Bambi." What's more, the fact that the Chargers' title came before the advent of the Super Bowl means that it gets discounted: Even before the distance of time became what it is now, NFL fans have come to regard any title won before the Super Bowl, NFL or AFL, as not a "real" championship. And the fact that it came in the sad interregnum between the Kennedy assassination and the arrival of The Beatles is another reason it tends to get forgotten.