This nearly happened a year ago, after the NFL’s Rams announced their move from St. Louis back to greater Los Angeles. The Chargers had a chance to leave San Diego then and commit to joining the Rams at their $2.6 billion stadium (and counting) being built in Inglewood … or they could wait a year and then decide.

The Chargers decided to wait a year … and now they have decided.

It is not good for San Diego.

Bright and early this morning the Chargers announced their decision to abandon San Diego after 56 years playing there to move into the L.A. market. They will play the next two seasons at StubHub Center, in Carson, before joining the Rams in opening the posh new yard, in 2019.

Some thoughts on the Chargers and their decision.

–The usual condemnations are coming in. Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union Tribune leads the way. He decided that Dean Spanos, Chargers chairman, now becomes “the most hated man in San Diego. Ever.”

Mr. Acee has reached Stage 2 of the “five stages of grief”. That would be anger, which comes after denial (followed by “bargaining, depression, acceptance”). His never having had a team leave on his watch, well, of course. A year ago, it was a guy at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Truth be told, I think I wrote one of these overwrought pieces in 1994, when Georgia Frontiere took the Rams to St. Loo. We all do it. Maybe Oakland will break the cycle, when the Raiders leave again, this time for Las Vegas. But probably not.

–What fans (and sports writers) don’t always remember that a team leaving seems really personal, but isn’t meant to be. Spanos looked around the NFL and saw all the palaces other NFL teams play in (well, aside from Mark Davis, who is about to take the Raiders out of Oakland) and wanted to know what San Diego could do for him — and this went on for more than a decade. Eventually, Spanos decided he could make more money and make his team more valuable as a tenant in the Taj Mahal of venues, Los Angeles Stadium.

–Politicians always run for cover, when teams leave, because it’s not their fault, see? “Fault” is a subjective term, and the team takes the lion’s share of abuse … but angry San Diego fans may want to ask mayor Kevin Faulconer what he did to stave off the Chargers bailing on his city. (His saying the Chargers will regret it … is just sad.)

To be sure, he and San Diego’s government did the right thing by refusing to use public money to build a stadium for the Chargers, and 57 percent of voters backed that concept on the ballot in November. But fans eventually get around to thinking (after they burn team paraphernalia) a lack of imagination on the part of the civic officials played a part, when a team leaves.

–City officials ought to stay strong. They just took a hit and, yes, Big Brother Los Angeles is snickering at their misfortune, which has to sting, but just about anyone who has examined the topic has decided spending public money on a privately held sports club is a remarkably bad investment.

–Most people who have been to San Diego love the place and the vibe there, and wish they could live there. San Diego’s professional teams, however, seem less enthusiastic about being based there. The Clippers lasted there six years before leaving for Los Angeles, in 1984. Now the Chargers are driving north on Interstate 5.

Has another city lost its only NBA team as well as its only NFL team? I’m thinking no.

The last big-league franchise in America’s 17th-biggest market is the baseball Padres. Let’s guess the Padres will get just about anything they want, for the near future.

–San Diego should remain something of an attractive option for the next NFL team that wants to move, but they will need to do something about a stadium to make it happen … and it is hard to envision that at the moment. Also, San Diego is in a weird place, geographically. On the border of Mexico, to the south, hundreds of miles of desert to the east, the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the Rams and, gulp, Chargers up north. Any club looking at the pros and cons of the city would realize their fan base has to come pretty much from a geographic quarter-circle described by Oceanside, Vista, Escondido, El Cajon and the Mexican border.

–The Chargers announced their headquarters will be in Costa Mesa, in Orange County, about 50 miles from San Diego County … which suggests that the Chargers hope some people from the old town will make the drive north to see them play. Wishful thinking, of course, but there you are.

–More broadly, the Chargers may be trying to position themselves as the team for the Orange County/Long Beach/South Bay part of the L.A. market. The Rams, remember, will have their training facility in Thousand Oaks, in Ventura County, 40 miles east from under-construction Los Angeles Stadium.

–Good call by the Chargers to play at a soccer field for the next two seasons. No, really. (Even if they will become the first NFL team to go play in a soccer-specific Major League Soccer venue.) The Chargers have very few followers in the Los Angeles market, and there is just no way they could fill, say, the Rose Bowl or L.A. Coliseum. They ought to be able to fill the StubHub Center in Carson, near where the Chargers and Raiders were talking (a year ago) about sharing a stadium.

Could be some residual embarrassment if the grounds crew can’t get the soccer markings off the pitch (uh, field) before the Chargers play, on Sundays in September-October.

–The Rams have about 40 more years of history in Los Angeles, but the Chargers will arrive with the better team — or so it would appear. Philip Rivers is a real quarterback; it’s not clear the Rams have one. The Chargers will have to market their team vigorously, and a winning season next season would help them make up some ground on the Rams.

–How should San Diego Chargers fans feel? Like suckers. Like orphans. A sports team that mattered to them picked up and left. The fans made the mistake of believing a business transaction was a love affair.

But they are not alone. Since 1982, NFL teams have moved eight times, leaving Oakland, Baltimore, St. Louis (twice), Los Angeles (twice), Houston and now San Diego.

Perhaps the long view will be of some comfort. Those cities that were abandoned? All of them got back an NFL team, eventually, even if the wait sometimes stretched as long as 21 years.

In the meantime, fans in San Diego never have to worry about their team’s games being blacked out.