BOLTED

A look into what's to come on BOLTED

2017. What was once unthinkable has become reality. The San Diego Chargers are now the Los Angeles Chargers. The Chargers’ move is the NFL’s grandest experiment yet. A test of civic pride, media market rights, and real estate deals. Money, power, and just a little bit of football. In our final episode, we'll look at where things stand. What happens when one city loses its team and another city gai...

January 2015. New San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer triumphantly declared in his first State of the City address that he would be assembling a group of civic leaders to “keep the Chargers in San Diego where they belong.” But the Chargers were no longer the only team eyeing a move to Los Angeles. The Rams and Raiders, former Angelenos themselves, were also mulling a move back. This episode chronicles...

By the start of the 21st century, the Chargers franchise was in shambles. They were the worst team in football, playing in an aging and increasingly obsolete stadium. But change was coming. On the field, the organization underwent one of the most successful rebuilds ever accomplished in football, producing a dominant team that won five AFC West titles in six years. Off the field, the Chargers hire...

As the nineties came to a close, two parallel crises were slowly building in San Diego. The first was at City Hall, where the city’s pension system was pushing the city to the brink of financial ruin. The second was with the Chargers, whose elite prospect QB Ryan Leaf was about to take the field. We talk to Leaf, and the policymakers who were there. This episode’s sponsors include: MANSCAPED.com -...

January 12th, 2017. The San Diego Chargers of the NFL packed their bags after 56 years of calling San Diego home, and headed north to Los Angeles. But to understand why, we have to go back decades, even centuries. How is the history of these two cities intertwined by centuries of a bitter rivalry? How did the Chargers come to call San Diego home? And how were the seeds for disaster planted generat...

In 1984, majority interest in the Chargers was bought by Alex Spanos, a construction magnate who rose from rags to riches. But how did the Spanos family first accumulate their fortune? How did their management style influence their conduct as owners? And what happens when a team of underdogs finds themselves playing in football’s biggest game? This episode’s sponsors include: MANSCAPED.com - Get 2...

BOLTED is a six-part docuseries podcast from BLEAV Podcast Network that chronicles the rise and fall of the San Diego Chargers, the fight to keep them that split a city in two, and the aftermath that left a football team without fans, and football fans without a team. Dozens of former players, staff, politicians, reporters, and academics all weigh in for this story of money, power, and a little bi...