Steve Young threw six touchdown passes and the Chargers could not stop any of them. Super Bowl XXIX, January 1995, the 49ers winning 49-26 in a game that was over by the second quarter. San Diego, as the franchise was then, had clawed through the AFC to get there and then ran into a quarterback having the best single game a Super Bowl has ever seen. Six touchdowns. A record that has stood for thirty years.

One trip, one blowout

It is the only Super Bowl the Chargers have ever reached. One appearance, one loss, and a lopsided one at that. Stan Humphries and Natrone Means had a real team, good enough to win a conference, and they got the worst possible draw on the worst possible day. Then the franchise picked up and moved from San Diego to Los Angeles, leaving a city that loved them with a single bittersweet Super Bowl Sunday to remember.

The part that stays with me

San Diego lost its team and its one shot at glory, and neither came back. Chargers fans, old and new, you have one trip in the books and it did not go your way. I know the feeling of a Super Bowl that arrives and then humiliates you. You get up. You wait for the next door. So far it has not opened again.