After the recent news about San Francisco 49ers controlling owner Jed York, it’s pretty safe to assume he’s going to lay low for a while. How long he chooses to keep a low profile is unclear, but after such a public and embarrassing fall from being tolerated (grace feels like a bit too strong a word), no one could blame him if he goes a while without speaking publicly on behalf of the franchise.
The NFL has its team owner meetings going on right now, and 49ers CEO Al Guido is there representing the team instead of York, which does not come as any sort of shock.
Guido just assumed the CEO title earlier this year after many years with the organization, and it seems pretty clear York has been grooming him for a larger role with the organization.
Maybe all along, York was planning to take more of a back seat and wanted to bring Guido to the fore, but recent events have accelerated that process much faster than anyone could have imagined.
Earlier this year, Guido sat down for an interview with The Athletic and spoke very confidently about how the 49ers are “the globe’s team.” He pointed to data that suggests the Niners are the most popular team outside of the United States, which might explain why the team is playing two international games this year.
Will Al Guido change things at all for the 49ers?
If he is the public face of the franchise going forward, at least in terms of upper management, what does that mean for the 49ers? York will obviously still be involved, but maybe he will defer to Guido more and more in the future.
Guido is clearly very ambitious and confident in San Francisco's future. He wants Levi’s Stadium to host more Super Bowls and more big sporting events like the World Cup.
He also wants the Niners to win more Super Bowls and reiterated in that article how that is the goal animating and driving the entire organization.
Surely he is going to speak more on the franchise's vision going forward, as it seems very unlikely York will stand in front of a microphone and take questions from the media for quite some time.
That means that anything York would usually speak about will probably now fall to Guido.
Don’t expect him to taken the franchise in a completely different direction, since he does still work for York at the end of the day, but maybe he can put his own spin and flavor on the job and at least be more well-liked than York was when he held the CEO title.
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