IN MIDST OF TEARDOWN, FIRST NAME COMES BACK

Deal with SDCCU expired at start of year, so it’s once again known as San Diego Stadium

The end is near for the 54-year-old stadium in Mission Valley that is in the midst of demolition.

But the facility will go out the way it came in — as San Diego Stadium.

Naming rights held the past four years by San Diego County Credit Union ended Jan. 1, a spokesman for SDCCU confirmed Tuesday.

So the stadium returns to its original name, the one with which it debuted Aug. 20, 1967, when the Chargers played the Detroit Lions in a pro football exhibition game (the Lions won 38-17 before a crowd of 45,988).

It was called San Diego Stadium until 1981, when the City Council approved renaming it San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium in honor of the late former San Diego Union sports editor and columnist who was a driving force behind its cre

ation.

The name was changed again, to Qualcomm Stadium, in 1997 when the local company stepped in with $18 million to purchase naming rights. The deal was made to provide the additional f inancing necessary to bridge a funding gap in the $80 million expansion completed before the 1998 Super Bowl.

It was called Qualcomm Stadium for the next 20 years, except for a 10-day pe

riod in December 2011 when it was branded Snapdragon Stadium to promote Qualcomm’s new processors.

SDCCU purchased naming rights in September 2017 for $500,000, just more than $30,000 a month, through the end of 2018. A reduced rate was available because the Chargers had moved to Los Angeles before the 2017 season.

SDCCU then signed a two-year extension for $1.5 million, just more than $60,000 a month, that included additional signage in and around the stadium.

An SDCCU spokesman did not immediately respond to an email question on whether the deal ended early, after San Diego State announced in September no more events would be held at the stadium.

In August, the university took ownership of the property and has begun Phase 1 of the SDSU Mission Valley project with construction of 35,000-seat Aztec Stadium.

SDSU moved its 2020 home football games to Carson’s Dignity Health Sports Park. The Holiday Bowl would have been looking for

a venue as well had the 43rd annual college football bowl game not been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It had been planned for the Aztecs to play at the stadium through the 2021 season. Demolition was not scheduled to begin until the first quarter of 2022, according to the Final EIR for SDSU Mission Valley.

That timetable was moved up when the stadium was determined unusable because of its dilapidated condition.

Demolition work began

last month — including removing the SDCCU logo atop the stadium scoreboard — and several sections on the stadium’s east side already have been torn down. Demo is expected to continue throughout the winter and spring until the entire structure has been reduced to rubble.

The concrete is being ground up onsite and will be used as fill elsewhere on the property where the land is being built up to mitigate past f looding issues.