National Football League
fromBleacher Nation
1 week agoEli Manning Clears the Air and Explains What Happened in the 2004 NFL Draft
Eli Manning said he pushed back on the Chargers in 2004 because he doubted their commitment to winning.
The event was the brainchild of an ambitious Los Angeles-based lettuce farmer, Frank Takahashi. Takahashi footed the bill to stage a cross-Pacific showdown between the two teams, hoping one day to own a Tokyo-based franchise - a cost of several hundred thousand dollars at the time, equivalent to millions today. "If we have a sellout," he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1976, "I will break even."