49ers Remind San Francisco of Glory Years - NYTimes.com HOME PAGE TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR TIMES TOPICS Subscribe: Digital / Home Delivery Log In Register Now Help Search All NYTimes.com Pro Football WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS BASEBALL N.F.L. COLLEGE FOOTBALL N.B.A. COLLEGE BASKETBALL HOCKEY SOCCER GOLF TENNIS GLOBAL SPORTS New Generation of 49ers Success Log in to see what your friends are sharing Log In With Facebook on nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s By GREG BISHOP This? Published: January 21, 2012 SAN FRANCISCO — Last weekend at Candlestick Park, it felt the RECOMMEND What’s Popular Now way it used to feel when “Montana” and “Young” and “Rice” were TWITTER China’s Great Bloomberg Plan stitched onto jerseys, when the 49ers boasted a franchise as Uprooting: Aims to Require LINKEDIN Moving 250 Food Composting successful as any in sports. SIGN IN TO E- Million Into MAIL Cities Enlarge This Image To Coach Jim Harbaugh, it felt like a PRINT fortress, as “good as it can get.” To REPRINTS Ted Robinson, the team’s radio SHARE announcer, it felt like a renaissance as he nearly lost his voice. To the former running back Roger Craig, it felt like the glory days, when the 49ers won five Super Bowls in 14 seasons, when he never played on a losing team. “Candlestick was shaking,” Craig said. “Martians on Mars could have heard us screaming.” San Francisco 49ers Jed York, left, now the president of As Jed York, the team president, left the stadium, his first the 49ers, talking to Coach Bill Walsh and his uncle, Eddie DeBartolo. phone call was to his uncle, Eddie DeBartolo Jr., a cellular link between present and past. DeBartolo’s ownership N.F.L. tenure, from 1977 to 2000, produced the 49ers’ MOST E-MAILED RECOMMENDED FOR YOU Live Scoreboard juggernaut. He later, when ensnarled in the corruption Standings 1. IN-BOX Stats | Injuries case that sent the former Louisiana governor Edwin W. Letters to the Editor Edwards to prison, ceded control of the team to his sister, Giants Denise DeBartolo York. 2. Pick a College Postseason and Louisville Schedule/Results Will Probably Show Up for It Stats | Roster Her son, Jed, wanted Uncle Eddie to return to Candlestick Depth Chart 3. 5 Settle Gender Bias Suit Against Fire on Sunday and serve as an honorary captain when the Department Jets 49ers host the Giants in the N.F.C. championship game. Schedule/Results Stats | Roster DeBartolo accepted. 4. ON HOCKEY Depth Chart Reversal for Rangers: Vigneault Puts “It will be the most emotional moment I’ve spent with the Offense First, With a Dose of Humor Enlarge This Image 49ers,” he predicted last week. 5. A San Antonio Graduate Program That Churns Out N.B.A. Coaches DeBartolo arrived here from Youngstown, Ohio, and, with his three-piece suits and outsider status, bombed at his 6. A Veteran Player Introduces Himself As a initial news conference. His decision to hire Joe Thomas Rookie Coach as the general manager proved equally disastrous. 7. OFF THE DRIBBLE http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/sports/football/49ers-remind-san-francisco-of-glory-years.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[6/17/2013 3:15:56 PM] 49ers Remind San Francisco of Glory Years - NYTimes.com In 1979, a friend and local radio announcer introduced Video: Style Over Substance in Kidd Hire DeBartolo to Bill Walsh, the coach who would change the 8. ON PRO BASKETBALL way the N.F.L. played offense. Their interview, DeBartolo Nets Couldn’t Pass Up Hiring of Kidd Scott Heckel/Associated Press said, lasted all of 15 minutes. He made the hire on the The Hall of Famer Jerry Rice and DeBartolo. spot. 9. Rangers Said to Choose Vigneault as New Coach Walsh held back nothing the first time he addressed the team. “I know what you’re all thinking,” he said, according to Randy Cross, an offensive 10. FRANK BRUNI lineman for 13 seasons in San Francisco. “You’re thinking, ‘I’ve been here for a while. The Pope’s Gay Panic I’ve survived three, four, five coaches. I’ll survive this one.’ Look around, gentlemen. You’re the worst team in the league. If you can’t play here, where are you going to play?” Log in to discover more articles based on what you‘ve read. DeBartolo, in what became the hallmark of his leadership style, empowered the chosen What’s This? | Don’t Show few that comprised his inner circle. He allowed Walsh, on a hunch, to draft a skinny quarterback from Notre Dame named Joe Montana in the third round in 1979. He hired John McVay as the general manager. He brought in Carmen Policy, an old friend from Youngstown, as an executive. In Walsh’s first season, the 49ers won two games. In 1980, they won six, including a victory against New Orleans that was the largest comeback at the time. The next year, when Montana and Dwight Clark connected for “the Catch” and the 49ers later won the Super Bowl, changed everything. A dynasty was born, even if it did not seem that way in 1982, when San Francisco finished with a losing record and Walsh needed to be talked out of quitting by DeBartolo Tech companies tread lightly that off-season. The 49ers then won at least 10 games a season for the next 16 years. in statements on U.S. spying ALSO IN DEALBOOK » Dole Food receives unsolicited takeover offer from The city of San Francisco needed a football team like that, after the assassinations of C.E.O. Mayor George Moscone and the politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, and after Want to commit insider trading? Here's how not to do it the Jonestown massacre. DeBartolo gave it to them. In the days before the salary cap, he provided Walsh with an embarrassment of talent, including, at one point, three All-Pro nose guards. He flew the team on a private plane and gave players’ wives necklaces after Super Bowl triumphs. When the 49ers crushed Dan Marino and the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl after the 1984 season, Robinson sensed the dynamic shifting. More locals wore 49ers gear. Tickets seemed impossible to obtain. The 49ers became the dominant presence in Northern California sports, and, Robinson said, “second place wasn’t even close.” Those teams were so good, for so long, the Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young said on an ESPN conference call last week, he could not remember how many championship games he played in. Cross said: “With good teams, you could put them in jock straps, without shoes, on broken glass, and they’re going to win. That’s how we felt for the better part of a decade.” Looking back, DeBartolo said he failed to appreciate the history involved. The expectations reached almost impossible levels, and this levied tolls physical and emotional. When Craig arrived in 1983, the first thing a teammate said to him was “we drafted you to win a Super Bowl.” Ads by Google what's this? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/sports/football/49ers-remind-san-francisco-of-glory-years.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all[6/17/2013 3:15:56 PM] 49ers Remind San Francisco of Glory Years - NYTimes.com Such expectation, Policy said, “meant everyone was under a great deal of pressure to 2013 Best Skin Tighteners An Unbiased Review List of The Top deliver, and deliver didn’t mean the playoffs, deliver meant get to the Super Bowl and Performing Skin Tighteners In 2013 win it.” SkinCareSearch.com/Skin_Tightening Beachfront Homes for Sale That pressure, much of it self-inflicted, paled in comparison with what came next. on Florida's Southeast Coast. Astonishing Beauty, Gated Community DeBartolo removed himself from day-to-day operations in 1997 to handle his legal SailfishPoint.com/Oceanfront problems. He testified against Edwards and pleaded guilty to having knowledge of Delta Burke Swimwear extortion and fraudulent conduct and failing to report it. Love What You Swim In Sizes 12-44W. Shop New Swim Looks at Great Prices www.WomanWithin.com The N.F.L. suspended DeBartolo for the 1999 season and fined him $1 million. At that time, Policy said: “You lived under a requirement to succeed, and then, all of a sudden, everything was falling apart. There was no structure. There was no organizational direction, no authority, and at the same time, a distance was developing between me and the guy I always thought of as my brother.” DeBartolo says that misconceptions linger from that time period: that he was forced to sell the 49ers to his sister, that he was barred from the N.F.L. He did acknowledge tension with his sister when they divided the family assets, left by their father, who died in 1994, swapping control of the 49ers for real estate holdings. To give up the team that Cross said “meant everything to him” stung, even if, as DeBartolo insisted last week, everything ultimately worked out. “It’s almost like getting a divorce,” DeBartolo said. “It gets tough. But Denise is my sister. I love her and her family very much.” Over time, the tension eased. When the 49ers honored safety Ronnie Lott in 2003, DeBartolo returned to Candlestick, at his sister’s invitation. When the team created a Hall of Fame in 2009, it named it after Edward DeBartolo Sr., and made Eddie an inductee. For all the good family vibrations, though, the franchise entered a dark decade, hampered by poor decisions and salary-cap restraints.