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Who's going to be our next coach?I keep asking myself that question because our front office is meddling and we don't have a qb.I just hope we don't go through another 7 years of garbage football.
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Who's going to be our next coach?I keep asking myself that question because our front office is meddling and we don't have a qb.I just hope we don't go through another 7 years of garbage football.
[h2]Are the 49ers heading for the auction block?[/h2]
You’ve had it up to your eyebrows with the York-DeBartolo family, haven’t you, 49ers fans? Especially with Jed York, who has run your favorite toy into the ground and seems to have it headed straight to China.
Great. But did you ever think about how Jed and his parents might feel about you ?
[h4]BY SCOTT OSTLER[/h4]
The family righted the 49ers’ ship after an awkward ownership turnover caused by former owner Eddie DeBartolo’s clumsy mistake. The Yorks found a way to fund a new stadium. On Jed’s watch, the 49ers returned to their former glory for a brilliant three-season run.
The family’s thank you? You harass and belittle the Yorks, especially Jed, in every public forum, sometimes to his face. You get personal, mocking Jed’s inherited wealth and elitist cluelessness.
That’s got to be a bummer for Jed, who did only what most of us do: We take whatever our parents give us, in money and character, and run with it. Had my parents given me a football team, I would have accepted it.
And as much as Jed might be reeling from the assault, imagine his mother.
So: Everyone’s unhappy! Fortunately, there might be a way out of this mess.
It is often said that Denise DeBartolo York, the actual owner of the team, would never sell her 49ers. An NFL team is a money tree on steroids, and this one provides Denise’s oldest child a great opportunity and challenge.
But let’s take a fresh look, using logic and conjecture to connect some dots. (Denise DeBartolo York, John York and Jed York were invited by The Chronicle, through the team PR department, to respond to or comment on this story, and did not do so.)
First, Denise DeBartolo York had the 49ers dumped in her lap after a misstep by her brother. Eddie DeBartolo had to surrender the 49ers to his sister after being convicted of a felony related to his attempt to bribe his way into the riverboat-gambling business in Louisiana. Denise had — and has — zero interest in the fame and limelight of NFL team ownership. She and husband John York live in Youngstown, Ohio, for crying out loud.
John was the 49ers’ CEO for a while, and quickly became an object of ridicule. So Denise and John came up with a plan: Turn over the team to young Jed, who was not yet 30. Let Jed’s good friend and confidant, Paraag Marathe, a very bright lad with degrees from Cal and Stanford (and some toughness), run the team and take the inevitable abuse from fans and media. Jed would do ceremonial stuff and work quietly on a new stadium.
Whoops! That plan blew up after the 49ers — Jed and Marathe — hired Jim Harbaugh. When the team started winning, Jed was tempted to step into the limelight a bit. Why not take a bow, on behalf of the family, for reviving the 49ers and building them a new home?
Then Harbaugh morphed into a monster and a bully, unable to work and play well with anybody. In this desperate situation, questionable decisions were made by Jed, Marathe and general manager Trent Baalke. The stadium was nice, but not flawless.
The team sank. Oh, the braying from angry fans and pitiless critics!
Eddie DeBartolo surely warned his nephew of the perils of team leadership. A young Eddie D took a terrible beating from those fans and media before he hired Bill Walsh. Jed surely knew of the crazy passions of fans, but the volume of hate had to come as a shock.
Now, let’s jump into Denise’s shoes. You’re a loving mom. You knew your son’s qualifications for the CEO job were a bit light, but he worked hard in college, trained in the finance world, and he’s a diligent and earnest young man with a nice family of his own. Now he’s a public piñata.
What does a mother do? A mother takes action. Here are two realistic scenarios:
•A complete restructuring of the team. The family probably would like to retain the current structure for one more season, to give the current people, including head coach Jim Tomsula, a chance to fix what’s broken. But if the spiral continues — and Sunday’s brutal loss didn’t help — you blow it all up after this season.
The Yorks could bring in a new president to run the show, an outsider or maybe Marathe. Baalke goes, replaced by a new head of football ops (think: Mike Holmgren), who hires a new GM. Jed moves out of the day-to-day operations and into a side role, or into his own business.
•Sell the 49ers. Larry Ellison once had interest in buying the team and was told no, but it was a gentle no, with the door left ajar.
The selling price would be sky-high, well above apparent market value, but Ellison, I’m told, could scare up the loot. He was crushed when he lost on the bidding for the Warriors. He wants into the owners’ club.
If the Yorks are considering a sale, they don’t want word to leak. Why let the naysayers begin to celebrate while you’re still the owners?
A sale-in-the-planning logically would explain the move of Marathe, from his job as team president into a vaguely explained reassignment. The recent shuffle was labeled by some observers as a demotion, but that’s unlikely, considering the strong affection and respect John, Denise and Jed have for Marathe.
There is media speculation that the move is partly because of friction between Marathe and players/agents in contract negotiations. However, the 49ers say Marathe will remain the team’s lead contract negotiator.
A more logical explanation for Marathe being replaced as president by Al Guido — whose corporate credentials are not nearly as shiny as Marathe’s — is that Marathe now can jump into the hard, full-time labor of selling the team. An army of accountants and tax lawyers would be involved, and the Yorks need someone bright and trusted to ride herd on that army.
This much you can count on: Mother Bear isn’t going to mope hopelessly around her cave in Youngstown while her oldest cub is under attack from a mob of fans on the uncivilized Barbary Coast.
One way or another, big change is in the wind.
maybe Brent and Steve are still interested?[h1]NFL owners might welcome Ellison purchase of 49ers / Some insiders express desire for Yorks to sell team[/h1]
Larry Ellison, billionaire founder of Oracle Corp., is interested in owning a National Football League franchise and recently met with the league's commissioner to discuss plans for Los Angeles. But there may have been another California city on the agenda, too.
Some NFL owners are concerned about the decline of the 49ers -- both on the field and in fan interest -- under the stewardship of owners Denise DeBartolo York and her husband, John York.
Owners of other teams, speaking on condition of anonymity, bemoaned the 49ers' troubles on the field, and one said "the whole league" wished they would be sold to a new owner. The 49ers' old stadium and their declining attendance are of serious concern.
NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, accompanied by Roger Goodell, the league's executive vice president and chief operating officer, met Ellison over dinner in San Francisco. The group also included Carmen Policy, the former president of the 49ers and Cleveland Browns who now lives in San Francisco, and a couple of Ellison's associates.
Greg Aiello, the league's vice president of public relations, had only a "no comment" on the meeting and said that, although the quest for a Los Angeles franchise and stadium had been going on for years, the NFL was not close to any action. An Oracle representative said the company also had no comment.
Another source familiar with the meeting raised the San Francisco issue.
"Don't ever think that perhaps part of the commissioner's interest in coming to dinner wasn't ultimately directed towards the North, as opposed to the South (of California)," the source said.
Los Angeles has been without an NFL franchise since the Raiders and Rams left before the 1995 season, and it is a high priority for Tagliabue because an L.A. team almost certainly would increase the value of the new television packages. The current deals expire after the 2005 season.
But some team owners contacted by The Chronicle expressed equal concern over the plight of the 49ers, including their inability to get a new stadium. These issues also could affect the television contracts.
One influential team owner said of the 49ers, "I wish they'd be a better team (because) that's an important market for us." The owner of another team said "there is no chance" the Yorks would get a new stadium, said he hoped they would sell the 49ers and said "the whole league would give a collective sigh of relief if that happens."
"There is no chance they're going to get it done, and she's got to wake up and say, 'We're selling the team -- we're taking our money and going home, ' " the second owner said. "Quite frankly, I don't know where her head is at, because other than the fact her husband is enjoying himself and the notoriety of running a football team, everybody's calling him an idiot in the meantime."
On the field, the 49ers -- one of the greatest dynasties in sports through the '80s and early '90s -- are a shadow of the teams that starred Jerry Rice, Joe Montana and Steve Young and were owned by Eddie DeBartolo, Denise DeBartolo York's brother. She took over the franchise when DeBartolo had to step aside because of his involvement in a Louisiana gambling case.
The 49ers' victory last Sunday was their first in five games this season, and prospects for improvement in the near future are dim. One result of more losses than victories could be a decline in attendance. Officially, that has not been the case yet, and the 49ers say every home game this season is sold out. However, there were thousands of empty seats from the outset of Sunday's game at Monster (formerly Candlestick) Park, many more no-shows than were usual in the past.
Local TV stations cannot broadcast home games that are not sold out. Should the 49ers' attendance officially decline, television blackouts of both Bay Area teams are a possibility by next season, which is bad timing because negotiations on new TV contracts are going on. The Raiders already are often blacked out, but the 49ers have not had a home game blacked out since early in the 1981 season.
These problems and potential problems fuel concern among NFL owners. But the Yorks have said they do not plan to sell the 49ers.
"John and Denise were both at the game last week and expressed no desire whatsoever to sell, and never have in the past,"Sam Singer, a spokesman for the Yorks, said Friday. "The family is very committed to keeping, owning and running a winning team."
Singer also said the Yorks would "make some public pronouncements about what their plans are for a stadium in San Francisco" sometime after the season ends and before the 2005 season begins.
Although stadium construction often is mostly publicly financed, two of the league's newest stadiums, for the Patriots and Eagles, required owners Robert Kraft and Jeffrey Lurie, respectively, to put up between $300 million and $400 million apiece. The Patriots' stadium, completed in 2002 for about $325 million, was privately financed. Public funds constituted less than half of the cost of the Eagles' new home, completed one season later for about $520 million.
There is no practical way for the league to force an owner to sell; if they could have, other owners would have forced the Raiders' Al Davis out of the league several lawsuits ago.
An NFL source close to Tagliabue, asked to gauge Ellison's degree of interest, said, "He sounds like he is (interested), but he's probably thinking about 12 different things."
Ellison has two characteristics the NFL demands -- he is high-profile, and he has the ability to write a big check. It most likely would take at least $1 billion to get started in Los Angeles.
"Having the stadium is important (in Los Angeles), so having somewhat deep pockets is important," said one owner. "Whether he's the right guy or not, I don't know."
Groups studying four stadium sites in the Los Angeles area are expected to make a preliminary report at a league meeting in Detroit later this month. The league has set a target date of 2008 for a team in Los Angeles, and no decisions are expected before the annual owners meeting next March, at the earliest.
The potential sites are for new facilities in Anaheim or Carson and for remodels of the Rose Bowl and the Los Angeles Coliseum.
Traditionally, the NFL identifies its sites before beginning the process of choosing a team owner. With Los Angeles, there is the added question of whether the league would expand there or move a team, but -- after four teams have been added in the last decade -- there appears to be little support for more expansion.
Although the 32 existing owners would receive an immediate windfall of, say, $30 million apiece in splitting the franchise fee of a Los Angeles expansion team, that money soon would be offset by the additional division of the TV contract. Further, a 33rd team would destroy the balance the league finally achieved in 2002 -- eight divisions of four teams apiece with the teams within each division playing nearly identical schedules.
The Minnesota Vikings are the only team known to be on the market and, along with New Orleans, San Francisco, Indianapolis and San Diego, are one of five teams with significant stadium problems.
One NFL owner suggested the possibility of a solution similar to the one baseball reached with Montreal, with the league buying an existing team and selling the ownership to a group in Los Angeles.
"I just don't think it works if we relocate (an existing owner) to Los Angeles," he said. "I don't think it will be well-received in that particular market. And that market is so fragmented; anyway, you need some strong personalities from that area to pull it together."
Ellison, although he lives in Woodside, and his business headquarters are on the Peninsula, also has considerable real estateinterests in the Los Angeles area. Tagliabue and other officials have talked to other potential owners about the Los Angeles situation, too, although it's not known whether any of them also have Bay Area ties.
[h1]Steve Young, Brent Jones want NFL team[/h1]
By Richard Weiner, USA TODAY
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[/td][/tr][tr][td]By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY[/td][/tr][tr][td]Steve Young led the 49ers to the Super Bowl after the 1994 season.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
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Former San Francisco 49ers Steve Young and Brent Jones are hooking up again — this time in an attempt to purchase an NFL team.
USA TODAY has learned that a group led by Young and Jones and backed by investors from Northern California's high-tech Silicon Valley has made its intentions known to the NFL office.
Young and Jones' group will privately fund a new stadium, a huge roadblock for any potential franchise purchase and/or relocation.
"We're not ruling out any available team," Jones says.
The natural assumption would be that Young and Jones, currently TV analysts, want to purchase the 49ers. But new team owner Denise DeBartolo-York has maintained there is no intention of selling.
The Atlanta Falcons are believed to be privately up for sale. The Miami Dolphins and Tampa Bay Buccaneers could be sold in the near future.
The Minnesota Vikings also could be moved to fill the void in Los Angeles, where no NFL team has played since the Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Rams left in 1995. Los Angeles lost its bid for a 2002 expansion team when the NFL chose Houston in 1999.
The stadium issue remains clouded regarding any possible NFL team's move to Los Angeles. Raiders boss Al Davis lost a $1 billion lawsuit against the NFL this year, a trial centered around L.A. stadium issues and area rights. Davis can appeal but reportedly may be forced to sell after losing millions in legal fees.
The average NFL franchise is worth about $400 million. Plans for a new stadium would increase the value of any franchise considerably.
Young, the top-rated passer in NFL history, and Jones, a four-time Pro Bowl tight end, began plotting NFL ownership as roommates during the 49ers' Super Bowl era. "It's always been a dream of ours," says Young, who retired last year and just signed on for another season as ESPN in-studio analyst. (Jones enters his fourth year at CBS.) "We used to stay up at night talking about it."
Could they relocate the team back to SF?![]()
And do what? The city of SF turned their back on the team years ago. San Francisco is just as guilty for the team being where it's at as the Yorks.
Bros, Larry Ellison could build 10 stadiums by himself in SF. Levi's is the least of our worries.
**** it, rebuild Keezar
LMAO @ sell Levi's to the Raiders![]()
joog price![]()
build the new Stick on alcatraz![]()