San Francisco 49ers: Top 10 Moments from the Otherwise Forgettable 2016 Season
By Peter Panacy
No. 2: Steve Young Calls Out the 49ers Ownership
Hall of Fame quarterback, and former 49ers great, Steve Young didn’t mince words about how he felt about the team’s ownership — saying what many Niners fans had been feeling for months, perhaps years.
Young appeared on the Tolbert and Lund Show on San Francisco’s KNBR 680 earlier this month and didn’t hold back on how CEO Jed York and his family had been running the 49ers into the ground:
"In the NFL, you don’t have to win to make money. The greatest growth equity value teams are not necessarily the winners. In fact, if you think about the 49ers in the last 15 years since the Yorks owned the team, you’re talking about equity values that went from — I’m just rough now — $200 million in 2000 to well over maybe $2 billion. It’s like 10 times or more. It’s like Silicon Valley. That’s one of the great success story of any tech business anywhere. That’s (the York’s) A game. Their equity value in the team is their A game, it’s what drives them. It’s what drives most of the owners. It’s what matters. It’s what they think about. It’s what they talk about. And the B game, is whether we win some games. It’s not that you don’t want to, or you don’t really want to, or it’s not really important. It’s just not the A game. And so when it’s not the A game, that’s the biggest issue with the NFL, is that success doesn’t track to success on the field. So you’re not held accountable."
Spot on.
Fans have been voicing this for quite a while now. Just check the comments section of any 49ers website or blog out there.
And the emptiness of Levi’s Stadium on game day should be yet another reason why the Yorks should pay attention.