This is what happens when Mommy and Daddy give you a football team. The story of the 49ers is very easy to understand if you look at any timeline.  When Eddie DeBartolo owned the team the 49ers were the class of the league. Whether you loved them or hated them they were the team to beat. That all changed in 1999 when Eddie DeBartolo had to give up ownership of the team because of his personal legal problems.  The team ownership went to his sister Marie Denise DeBartolo York. The new CEO was her husband, John York.  At first the team did pretty well under the leadership of head coach Steve Mariucci.  But soon it became clear that Mariucci was frustrated by his lack of power within the 49ers organization.  Sound familiar?  Even though he had a winning record, John York fired Mariucci.

The result was a rapid decline of the 49ers as a team. The team got progressively worse.  It didn’t change until they hired Jim Harbaugh. Under Jim Harbaugh the 49ers became a great team again. The players learned how to win again. It was one of the most remarkable turnarounds in NFL history. Yet Jim Harbaugh was just fired because he couldn’t get along with Jed York. They are going to replace him, with “somebody.”  Obviously the first criteria will be to get along with Jed York.

The following article in Wikipedia provides interesting details on Jed York:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jed_York

After graduating from Notre Dame he worked as a financial analyst for Guggenheim Partners in New York for about a year.  Then he was brought in to work for his father, John York, CEO of the 49ers.  He began his career as Director of Strategic Planning and then Vice President of Strategic Planning.  In 2008 he was appointed President of the 49ers by his father. He is now CEO of the 49ers.  On October 11, 2010, after the 49ers started 0-5, York wrote that the 49ers would win their division and make the playoffs. For the record, in 2010 the team ended up 6 -10 and the 49ers fired Mike Singletary. That is when the 49ers hired Jim Harbaugh and everything changed. The 49ers went on to play in three NFC championship games and one Superbowl. At the start of this season the 49ers were expected to be a favorite to win the Superbowl.

ESPN correspondence David Fleming noted that York could make this bold prediction because of his lifelong love of the 49ers, his high school baseball career and the fact that his godfather is Eddie DeBartolo. Who would dare compare the resume of someone like Jim Harbaugh to that?

This is really simple. Every NFL team with an open head coach position expressed interest in Jim Harbaugh. The 49ers just gave up one of the best coaches in the history of the NFL for absolutely nothing. When you give up someone other people value and you get nothing in return, somebody is obviously making a huge mistake.

Jim Harbaugh got one of the most prestigious coaching positions in the country. If you do not believe that, you have never lived in Michigan. He will be one of the highest paid coaches in the country, at any level, and he won’t have to listen to any more advice from Jed York. Who’s got it better than that!

I suspect a lot of 49er season tickets holders are seriously considering how much they are willing to spend to watch the 49ers next year.  It is hard to be overly optimistic considering what happened after the 49ers fired Mariucci because he couldn’t stand living in York town. Levi Stadium is already one of the most expensive tickets in the NFL. There are reports that traffic is horrible. Several 49er players have complained that the support from the crowd at Levi stadium doesn’t compare to the atmosphere at Candlestick. That makes sense, because the only people who can afford to go to 49er games are rich nerds from the Silicon Valley.  They are still trying to figure out why the 49ers are playing with an odd shaped soccer ball.

Who knows where we go from here, but my hunch is a lot of people in Michigan will be singing Hail to the Victors while the people in San Francisco will wonder where it all went wrong.

TDM