Sports in San Diego
[1] The area is home to several universities whose teams compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), most notably the San Diego State Aztecs.
The Farmers Insurance Open, a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour, is played annually at Torrey Pines Golf Course.San Diego hosted the National Football League (NFL)'s San Diego Chargers from 1961 to 2017, when the team relocated to the Greater Los Angeles area (now the Los Angeles Chargers).
San Diego is the largest American city not to have won a championship in a "Big Four"[a] major professional league.
Prior to the opening of Petco Park in 2004, the Padres played their home games at San Diego Stadium in Mission Valley.
In 1971, the Rockets were sold and relocated to Houston after Breitbard encountered financial distress due to tax-assessment issues surrounding the sports arena, which ultimately prevented sale of the team to another local owner.
The 1971 NBA All-Star Game was held at the San Diego Sports Arena, hosted by the Rockets just months prior to the team's sale and relocation.
The franchise was folded 11 games into that season after ownership learned that the team was to be shut out of the upcoming ABA–NBA merger, reportedly at the insistence of then-Los Angeles Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke.
Professional basketball returned from 1978 to 1984, in the form of the NBA's San Diego Clippers, the relocated successor to the Buffalo Braves franchise.
The investigation report recommended the termination of Sterling's ownership of the Clippers on the basis that he had failed to pay creditors and players on time.
Sterling ultimately remained owner, satisfying league officials by instead relinquishing operational duties of the franchise.
The Chargers began play in 1960 as a charter member of the American Football League (AFL), and spent its first season in Los Angeles where it struggled to garner a following before moving to San Diego in 1961.
By 1971, the year Breitbard's National Basketball Association franchise relocated to Texas to become the Houston Rockets, the Gulls had attendances larger than both the Rockets and the Californian National Hockey League (NHL) teams, the Los Angeles Kings and Oakland Seals.
[23] The Gulls ceased operations in 1974 to give way for the relocated San Diego Mariners of the upstart World Hockey Association (WHA), which at the time was the NHL's rival league.
Cooper and Esquinas's bid relied on a future new arena that their group would plan to build, but only if they were awarded an expansion team first.
Cooper and Esquinas's bid ultimately gave way to a new proposal by local developer Ron Hahn, who made a similar commitment to build a new arena, but only if an NHL or NBA franchise was secured first.
In contrast to the efforts in San Diego, Anaheim chose to build a new arena without commitments from any franchise, and were subsequently awarded a team.
San Diego has previously hosted an NCAA Division I ice hockey program, the United States International Gulls men's ice hockey team of United States International University (USIU), which competed for nine years from 1979 until 1988.
The USIU Gulls had some success on the ice and were notable for producing two future NHL players and being the only NCAA hockey team west of the Rockies when founded.
The team co-founded the short-lived Great West Hockey Conference (GWHC) with Alaska–Anchorage, Alaska–Fairbanks and Northern Arizona in 1985.
USIU folded its hockey team and subsequently the entire varsity sports program due to financial strain and ultimate bankruptcy.
[1] The team, named San Diego FC, is set to begin play in 2025 at Snapdragon Stadium with an ownership group headlined by Egyptian businessman Mohamed Mansour and the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation.
The club's founders include professional soccer players Demba Ba, Eden Hazard, Yohan Cabaye and Moussa Sow.
The team began play in December 2018 at Pechanga Arena and earned the second overall playoff seed in the West Division after a successful 10–8 regular season.
The city is also currently home to the NCAA Division I San Diego State Aztecs women's lacrosse team.
The team moved for the 2023 season after previously playing at both Torero Stadium and the SDSU Sports Deck.
In August 2021, after the cancellation of the Asia Swing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Barnes Tennis Centre San Diego was allocated a two-year ATP 250 tournament license.
In their first three seasons in San Diego, they finished with the league's top regular-season record twice (2014 and 2016), and won the King Trophy as 2016 WTT champions.
The Pro Volleyball Federation (PVF), the highest level of women's professional volleyball, announced a San Diego team in 2023 (ultimately named the San Diego Mojo) as one of the league's charter members, began play within the league's first season in 2024.
The team, which became known as the San Diego Wild, reached the 2023 NVA Championship Cup Finals in its first season, ultimately finishing runner-up after falling to the Orange County Stunners 3–0 on July 30, 2023.
[43] The region is becoming a center for the revival of the Mesoamerican ball game as the team hosts Ulama events across the county.
