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Column: For Chargers, Telesco-Spanos Era represents drop-off from A.J. Smith Era

COSTA MESA —

It was two decades ago that Dean Spanos, owner of the Chargers, began a habit of hiring Bill Polian proteges to run his football front office.

Polian having built five Super Bowl teams, the Spanos logic wasn’t dumb.

Yet the franchise’s only Super Bowl team is still the 1994 squad built by Bobby Beathard, who like Polian came west with a Super Bowl pedigree.

Five AFC West titles between 2004 and 2009 reflected well on former longtime Polian proteges John Butler and A.J. Smith, who’d migrated from Buffalo to San Diego in 2001.