Column: Chargers’ move to L.A. is just like their new logo: unoriginal and uninspired

One look at the logo of the new Los Angeles Chargers tells you all you need to know about owner Dean Spanos and his motives in moving the team. It’s unoriginal and uninspired, just like his decision to uproot the Chargers from their longtime home and flee northward to escape paying for a new stadium in San Diego.

Using a color that’s suspiciously close to Dodger blue, Spanos and the Chargers are blatantly trying to capitalize on the popularity and goodwill the Dodgers have generated over decades in Los Angeles. The Chargers’ stylized, interlocked letters “LA” look more like an accidentally electrocuted Dodgers logo than the symbol of an electrifying football team, which the Chargers haven’t been lately and surely won’t be for a while.

Funny, too, that the video they’ve posted on Facebook proclaims, “In 2017 the Chargers are bringing the fight to Los Angeles.” Fight for what, other than fans’ dollars? The NFL seems to view Los Angeles as a gigantic, personal ATM and has allowed the Rams — and now the Chargers — to migrate here to make large and frequent withdrawals from fans’ wallets. At some point the well is going to run dry, not only financially but emotionally, too.

And it’s not like the Rams’ performance in their first season back in Los Angeles has increased local demand for another NFL team. The Rams had an actual history here before they moved to St. Louis — much more than the Chargers’ lone season in L.A. — and the conditions seemed perfect when they returned for them to enjoy a honeymoon for at least three years, when their new stadium would be ready to open, and the novelty would carry them for another few years. Fans who went to Rams games as kids could now take their own kids. It would feel like a beloved family member had come home after a long absence.

But the Rams blew it. Their sin wasn’t that they lost their last seven games and 11 of the last 12 but how they lost those games, with an unimaginative playbook that lacked a running game and a coach and a team that couldn’t handle adversity. They were booed mercilessly, and with good reason. Coach Jeff Fisher is gone and Rams fans have to hope that quarterback Jared Goff wasn’t too badly scarred by his rookie season and will develop into a commanding and effective leader.

Into this more-than-slightly disillusioned and skeptical market come the Chargers, ready to tread a path littered by the Rams’ initial failures. The Chargers will sacrifice some ticket revenue for two seasons by playing in 30,000-seat StubHub Center in Carson before they piggyback off the Rams’ work and join them at the lavish stadium that Rams owner Stan Kroenke is helping fund in Inglewood. The Chargers might as well change their ugly new logo to a drawing of an outstretched palm that’s itching to be greased with cash, because that’s all they will stand for now.

helene.elliott@latimes.com

@helenenothelen

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