Eight Was Enough Between Brodie and Montana

What turned you into a fan of the team you’d like to cover?

It was a trivia question that I'd repeat often enough. If you failed it, well, you weren't a true fan.

The San Francisco 49ers, who had given their "Faithful" a couple of close calls in the early 1970s, had fallen once again into the tank.

The team's rebuilding genius, Bill Walsh, eventually arrived, bringing such names as Montana, Lott, Rice, Reynolds, Craig and, among plenty of others, Young, to lead San Francisco to a handful of Super Bowl championships. Until he got there, though, we had to eat plenty of dirt, dust and grass.

As a young fan, though, I had to pay my dues. Many of us from that paid those same dues.

The year was 1965. I was 10-years-old. Dad was working overtime at the Alameda Naval Air Station even though we had tickets to the 49ers' game at Kezar Stadium against the Los Angeles Rams.

They had Roman Gabriel, Jack Snow, Dick Bass, Tom Mack and the Fearsome Foursome.

We had guys like Kermit Alexander, John Brodie, John David Crow, Jimmy Johnson and, I'd soon discover, Tommy Davis.

I was not yet enough of a fan to discover that the Green Bay Packers were football's best team. Or that the 49ers' Bay Area rival Oakland Raiders played in a "pirate" league. Or that the Baltimore Colts' Johnny Unitas was a living legend.

Or that a guy named Jimmy Brown was in the final season of a spectacular career. From my vantage point, the 49ers were the best team anywhere. Little did I know.

On this particular sunny Sunday, the Rams were looking to upset the 49ers. But the game was close, the final seconds ticking away. My grandfather, Bill Coles, had driven me across the bridge to the game, taking Dad's place while he worked. Papa Bill knew far better than I what was taking place at Kezar.

I could barely see, I was so small. The crowd rose as one when a field goal was sent spinning through the goal posts, which were still on the goal line. Davis had kicked the game-winner over the heavily-favored Rams. I don't even recall the final score.

That was the day I became a fan. For 49er Faithful, there were plenty of subpar Sundays that followed. Except for a brief spurt of playoff appearances from 1970-72, it seemed that the team from Dallas always prevailed.

For the remainder of the decade, we were inhaling of lot of that dirt, dust and grass while fighting for respectability. We couldn't root for the Oakland Raiders, who made the playoffs almost every season.

When the 49ers' time finally came, culminating in the 1982 Super Bowl triumph over the Cincinnati Bengals, suddenly the 49er Faithful was rewarded for its long time suffering. Instantly, the 49er Faithful grew in its legion of followers. In my dirty little mind, they weren't "true" fans.

I watched as season tickets grew in large numbers. Airplane flights from near my new Southern California hometown—Redlands—took off from Ontario Airport on game days loaded with 49er Faithful.

The female fans were dressed in 49er red, including heavy red shades of lipstick. They guys would be laughing, drinking, trash talking against whichever teams they were playing that Sunday.

On one hand, it was nice to see so many on my side, especially in Ram/Raider Country. On the other hand, though, they really hadn't paid their dues.

In my view, they were "fake" fans. How dare they jump onto the bandwagon! I had to find a method of discovering whether they were true fans. I developed a quiz for the so-called "Faithful." Pass that quiz and you were a true member.

Everyone knows that John Brodie was the last All-Pro quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers until the arrival of Joe Montana. Brodie arrived in 1957, retiring in 1973, while Montana hit the Bay Area in 1979. Name the eight quarterbacks that started at least one game for San Francisco between Brodie and Montana.

Okay, naming five would be impressive. Six or seven would be sensational. Recalling each of the eight would require a true fan, a loyal fan. Naming each of the eight would be spectacular.

Over the years, dozens failed the quiz. Sure, they could name the obvious ones—the Heisman Trophy winners Jim Plunkett and Steve Spurrier, or even Steve DeBerg, the man who'd preceded Montana and, eventually, John Elway in Denver. Okay, that's four.

What other quarterbacks languished under center at Candlestick Park during the cold years between Brodie and Montana?

Well, there was another fairly obvious one, Norm Snead, a veteran signal-caller who spent two seasons in San Francisco. That's five.

The quiz-takers were convinced they'd get the answers easily. They didn't. They couldn't. They stuttered and stammered. As front-running members of the 49er Faithful, they were guilty of jumping onto the bandwagon once Walsh's forces started taking over the NFL throughout the 1980s and, eventually, into the 1990s.

But if you couldn't name the seven, you were a "soft" fan, not a true 49er Faithful, but a 49er Filler Fan. And when they started losing, yeah, you're right, they jumped off the bandwagon.

Among some of the answers:

"Didn't O.J. come over his last couple of years?"

"Oh, yeah. Unitas spent his last season playing there, right?"

"Wait a minute! Joe Namath didn't finish up with the Jets. I remember he played with the Niners."

For one thing, O.J. Simpson wasn't a quarterback. For another, Unitas did come west, but he played in San Diego. As for Namath, well, he was a Los Angeles Ram at the end.

Wrong, wrong and wrong!

See what I mean about true fans?

So who were the other three QBs during that between-Brodie-and-Montana era?

Ready? The final three were Tom Owen, Scott Bull and Joe Reed. Not exactly household names, are they? But they serve to represent that final point; that a true 49er Faithful had that secure inner knowledge.

In nearly 30 years of quizzing football fans, including plenty of 49er Filler Fans, not one person ever passed that test. The thing is, to a true 49er Faithful, it seemed so simple.