New trend? Chargers sell out home opener

Qualcomm Stadium won't be much Thursday night.

Tailgating will be tame. Thousands of seats will be empty. Due to a blackout, the 7 p.m. kickoff won't air on local television until a tape-delay broadcast three hours later.

The atmosphere soon will change.

The Chargers announced Thursday their Sept. 14 home opener against the Seahawks is sold out. Only a "very limited number" of suites, the team added, remain for the Week 2 game. San Diego first will conclude its preseason, hosting the Cardinals in a ho-hum fourth exhibition game.

A sellout is a positive start to the calendar.

Whether it becomes a trend of anticlimactic blackout lifts is more important.

The franchise had a 48-game sellout streak snapped in 2010. A run of blackouts followed, attendance dropping with the on-field product. The Chargers had three blackouts in 2010, two in 2011 and four in 2012. A blackout last December, one of two for the NFL all season, brings the Chargers' total to 10 the past four years.

Of their 18 home games not on primetime from 2010 to 2012, nine were blacked out. Likewise, nine of 11 games to be neither in primetime nor against a divisional opponent were blacked out.

San Diego returned to the playoffs last year for the first time since 2009. It may be too early to say sell-out crowds are returning as well — this was expected to be a hot ticket, it being the opener against a defending Super Bowl champion whose fan base, as seen at Qualcomm in the past, is capable of showing up in droves.

A better indication may be the next home game, Sept. 28 versus the Jaguars.

Regardless, it's a start.