It’s no longer wise to believe that because the Spanos family owns them, the Chargers are forever doomed.

I’ll belabor a point made here since January: once Dean and John Spanos hired Jim Harbaugh, the franchise was transformed.

The Chargers became an actual NFL franchise committed to winning.

The hire differed from any coaching move the Spanoses had made. If theyd chosen to cling to their rinky-dink ways, Harbaugh couldve stayed at Michigan. He could command top NFL dollar and more say-so than the Spanoses were accustomed to granting a head coach. He could hire his own general manager into a football front office headed by John Spanos since 2013.

Previous head coaches found the franchises support systems lacking. Harbaugh could make sure the Spanoses invested in infrastructure as a condition of taking the job.

Harbaugh’s hire no doubt thrilled NFL power brokers, knowing hed make the Chargers relevant in the Los Angeles media market and far beyond.

Sunday night, the same NFL power brokers surely enjoyed seeing and hearing a pro-Chargers crowd fill the Kroenke Dome for the nationally televised game.

I don’t know to what extent NFL leaders “encouraged” the Spanoses to hire Harbaugh. But going into last year, the league had become much more involved in attempts to smarten up team owners when it came to hiring coaches, said Randy Mueller, a former NFL football executive who works for The Athletic.

The Spanoses are NFL loyalists. They dont rock the yacht. The NFL has been very, very good to them. A decade ago, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and friends made it possible for them to play in the privately financed, $5.5-billion Kroenke Dome in the countrys second-largest market.

The Spanoses didnt do a great of reciprocating, in terms of hiring coaches and attracting pro-Chargers crowds, either in Orange County or L.A.

They hired a trio rookie head coaches in succession, and none of those low-cost hires panned out. While cheapness may have influenced each hire, the Spanoses desire to maintain a firm grip on power may have mattered, too. To hear Mueller, who worked for the Chargers from 2008 to 2018, the Spanoses would have deemed bright coach Sean McVay too pushy had he been interested in working with them.

The Spanoses can say the time was right last January for them to go large at head coach because theyd weathered financial storms associated with relocation and now were raking in L.A. money.

They can say they developed a relationship with Harbaugh decades ago when he was a Chargers quarterback, and they were just biding their time until they had the chance to hire him.

Whatever their rationale, whatever whispering the NFL’s big shots did behind the scenes, the move boded well for the franchises short and long-term competitiveness.

At 7-3, Harbaughs first team has exceeded by two wins the 2023 season-victory total under Brandon Staley, the former Rams defensive coordinator hired by John Spanos.

Under Harbaugh hire Jesse Minter, the Chargers defense stands first in points even after allowing a season-high total in the 34-27 victory Sunday over the Bengals.

Harbaugh and general manager Joe Hortiz seem to have hit on several player moves: the drafting of offensive tackle Joe Alt and receiver Ladd McConkey in the first and second rounds; the signings of running back J.K. Dobbins, linebacker Denzel Perryman, defensive tackle Poona Ford, cornerback Kristian Fulton and others; and the trade of receiver Keenan Allen that brought a fourth-round pick in the 2025 draft.

Harbaughs overhaul of the strength and conditioning staff, now headed by his former Michigan assistant Ben Herbert, seems to have paid off as well.

Less of the Spanos Way and all of Harbaugh have combined to transform the Chargers into an interesting, rising franchise that plays physical, low-ego football. Sundays winning touchdown came on a classic power-blocked 29-yard run by Dobbins.

Under Harbaugh, a longtime NFL quarterback, Justin Herbert, 26, has moved closer to greatness.

I doubt Goodell or anyone else in the NFLs upper power structure is surprised by any of this success story.