As Chargers bolt to LA, should Bengals fans worry?

The Chargers' move from San Diego to Los Angeles has some Bengals fans thinking: Could that happen to us?

Paul Daugherty asked about a year ago as St. Louis was about to lose its NFL team, "What if the Bengals went away?"

"The Bengals' lease is up in a decade (2026)," Daugherty wrote. "Would we be better or worse off in Cincinnati without the NFL? Or just different?"

More from Daugherty:

So, Cincinnati, what do you think of the stadium deal now?

I ask this not to revive all the old resentments. We voted for the stadiums, and in some very impactful ways, our region has benefited from their presence. Fort Washington Way is highly improved, The Banks exists and is doing OK. We retained our “big league’’ status, a nebulous benefit but a plus nevertheless.

Are we better off for all of it?

How much would it matter if the Bengals went away?

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What happened in San Diego? More from USA TODAY Sports' Brent Schrotenboer and Tom Pelissero (linked above):

In recent months, Chargers owner Dean Spanos came to believe he had no other viable business choice but to move to L.A. If the Chargers didn’t take this opportunity in L.A., their only other certain option in San Diego was to keep playing indefinitely at Qualcomm Stadium, which opened in 1967.

The latter is one of the oldest and worst stadiums in the NFL, and the Chargers have been trying for 15 years to replace it with a modern, lucrative new facility. But they never could reach a deal on how to pay for it with the city of San Diego, leading the team to look 120 miles north for alternatives while also trying to protect its turf in Southern California.

In January 2016, the team applied to relocate to the Los Angeles market as part of a joint plan with the Oakland Raiders to build a new stadium in Carson.

That plan didn’t fly, either. NFL owners rejected it in favor of an opposing plan by the Rams to relocate from St. Louis and build a $2.6 billion stadium in Inglewood.

NFL owners in January 2016 instead gave the Chargers a consolation prize of sorts. They granted the Chargers permission to share the Inglewood stadium with the Rams as long as they made a decision about it by Jan. 15, 2017, a deadline that recently extended to Jan. 17, 2017.  If they didn’t take the L.A. option by then, that option would go to the Raiders instead, putting more pressure on the team to use it or lose it.

Because of San Diego’s smaller market size, the team had said it needed public subsidies to pull off new stadium construction here, unlike in L.A., where the size and wealth of the market make such subsidies unnecessary and where the stadium construction debt could be shared by two teams.  For example, the Inglewood stadium calls for no public funding for construction and instead relies on stadium naming rights, personal seat license sales and other sources.

The Chargers owe the city of San Diego $12.575 million for the early termination of their lease, which was set to expire after the 2020 season. The team also would have to pay a relocation fee of $550 million to $650 million, which could be paid back over 10 years or more.

Also, a little Twitter comedy about the Chargers' new logo:

And another: