If I was to be hauled into a police station in the next few
days, I’m honestly not sure how I would describe my eyewitness
account of the alleged football game that took place in San
Francisco this past Sunday.
If I was to be hauled into a police station in the next few days, I’m honestly not sure how I would describe my eyewitness account of the alleged football game that took place in San Francisco this past Sunday.
The Niners-Dolphins eyesore – an epic battle for the No. 1 pick – was one of those uniquely tragic comedies … both funny and sad at the same time.
Up in the press box, the laughs just kept coming. Some joked of the sacrilege that was the cover of the 49ers game program – Joe Montana and (gasp) Tim Rattay featured side-by-side in the same throwing motion.
Some joked of Rattay’s play – and for the record, he just fumbled again – while others joked of knowing football and not even knowing some of these players – and for the record, I’d never heard of five Dolphin starters.
Or how about that announced attendance of 66,156? We were certain that was actually the per-yard salary of Kevan Barlow, he of the two-yards-and-a-cloud-of-Benjamins fame.
Ah yes, Mr. Barlow. Even yours truly elicited a laugh or two when declaring the Niners’ $20 million man the truest of all north-south runners. Seems to me he’s a big fan of taking the handoff and tumbling straight to the ground.
Of course, some inside the comedy club simply spent half the “game” checking their fantasy football teams. I might or not have been one of these people.
By around the middle of the fourth quarter, though, I had seen enough. It was time to talk to the real experts. It was time to talk to the faithful.
So I set up camp around one of the stadium gates and played exit pollster for a day. Why had this once proud franchise turned into the unquestioned laughingstock of the league? Who should be tarred and feathered in the middle of town square?
Talking to a wide range of fans – but mainly those with white hair and/or memories of Kezar Stadium – I found emotions ranging from anger to sarcasm to disappointment to just plain sadness.
“You expect the team to play with pride, to get better from week to week … at least some degree of improvement,” longtime season-ticket holder Roy Koss of San Francisco said before throwing up his hands.
“Not with the Yorks here, though. They should sell the team. And damnit, they should take Donahue and Erickson with them!”
Koss wouldn’t get much of an argument from 68-year-old Charlie Palmigiano, a season-ticket holder for more than three decades.
“This is as bad as it gets,” he said. “They need a new coach, a new stadium, a new owner, a new GM, a new offensive line and a new quarterback from the draft.”
Besides that, though, everything is just grand in Ninerland.
When told I was from Gilroy, his buddy Tim Rodgers pleaded with me.
“Can you get Jeff Garcia to come back?,” asked the San Rafael native. “Seriously, do you know his family or anything?”
Then, before I could finish laughing, I bumped into a woman with a grocery bag on her head.
“That was quite a display out there,” Mary Waters said from behind her New Orleans Saint-like mask. “Maybe I shouldn’t have cut out the part for the eyes.”
It was a lighthearted moment at the end of one of the darkest days in the rich history of this franchise. It was also a rare moment, though.
Most of the fans I talked to were distraught, disheveled and just downright depressed.
Don’t tell them their team can now draft whoever it wants. They’ll tell you the Yorks – infamous for once deducting 37 cents from a player’s paycheck after he mailed a letter at company expense – are way too cheap to ever pay for a No. 1 draft pick.
And please don’t them – or me, for that matter – that the salary cap is to blame for all this mess. Look, that’s another subject for another column, but the cap has nothing to with bad personnel decisions and even worse draft decisions.
Since their last Super Bowl victory in 1995, the Niners have drafted a whopping one Pro Bowler in the first round. Any explanation for that one? The infamous curse of the Drunkenmiller?
Please.
It’s time the organization fesses up and comes clean with its fans. It’s time they stop blaming everything under the sun for their embarrassing failure.
But most importantly, it’s time they give true loyalists like Richard Brun something to proud of again.
Despite living in Hawaii for the past few decades, the 67-year-old native of Fairfield flies back to the Bay Area at least once or twice a year to see his beloved Niners. As Brun talked about this season’s edition, though, the slightest trace of a tear came inching down his cheek.
He wiped it away quickly, hoping I hadn’t noticed. Despite his older age, this was a big, tough-looking guy. After his team’s latest blunder-filled effort, though, even he was reduced to a tear or two.
“This is got to be the worst I’ve ever seen – just terrible,” Brun said with a quivering lip. “It’s just sad, you know? It’s just really sad.
“That team out there is not the 49ers I know. That’s not the 49ers I love.”
It’s not the 49ers that anyone knows, Richard.
And before long – if some heads don’t roll and some philosophical changes aren’t made – it’ll be the 49ers that no one loves.
And there won’t be anything funny about that.
Brett Edgerton is a columnist for South Valley Newspapers. He can be reached at [email protected]
