49ers Slide Has No End in Sight

Whither the San Francisco 49ers?

This franchise, once the gold standard of the NFL, is terribly tarnished. Once they were the king Niners; now they are just pathetic also-rans.

Are they going to be the Santa Clara 49ers? Possibly. Are they going to the playoffs? Not anytime soon.

Are they going to raise ticket prices? Heck, yeah, they already did.

To the chagrin of generations of 49ers fans—for many of them do not even recognize this outfit anymore.

In the 1990s, I spent a lot of time in Stalag 49, the bunker/complex down in Santa Clara, where if you tripped you'd fall on a Pro Bowler. I was on the field for a number of unforgettable 49ers playoff victories at Candlestick Park. The 49ers even had a parade down Market Street in 1995, yeah, that was memorable, too.

So how did they get to the cellar of the league so quickly?

A lot of Niners faithful reflexively lay all the blame at the feet of the Yorks—Denise DeBartolo York and her husband John. That's fair; the pair deserves a lot of scorn. But there are others who can't escape responsibility.

Start with Carmen Policy, the former 49ers executive who's now trying to get a new park built in San Francisco in lieu of a move south. His inability to manage contracts at the dawn of the salary-cap era forced a parade of free-agent departures because the 49ers didn't have the cap room to sustain their dynasty.

But Policy's failures are nothing compared to that of Terry Donahue, Policy's successor who proved to be much more adept at being a TV analyst and a college coach. Donahue's feckless management of the team more or less made the 49ers the way they are today.

To a lesser extent, overmatched coaches Dennis Erickson, Norv Turner and now Mike Nolan, share some of the blame as well. Each at one time had a little bit of something to work with, and each performed well below what could be reasonably expected of them.

And of course, the players themselves, most notably Alex Smith, who's proved beyond a doubt that he's a bust as the No. 1 overall pick in the 2005 draft.

As the 49ers continue their decline, the franchise is also losing its value, monetary and otherwise. The team is among the least valuable in the NFL, according to the latest Forbes estimates. And the name that once inspired awe, admiration and fear in the opposition, now is merely a laughingstock.

Is there anything that may be done about this?

Unfortunately, no.

The 49ers do not have a future in San Francisco, as it's nearly impossible to get a football stadium built without public funding—and that just isn't happening. And the fact that this team wallows in mediocrity or worse doesn't seem to bother the Yorks all that much tells you all you need to know about the ownership's commitment. They're not unloading the team in any big hurry, either.

They're certainly not your father's glorious 49ers. They're not even your grandfather's 49ers, the lovable losers of Kezar. They're just, well, losers.