The 49ers' biggest sin was hiring Donahue
Ray Ratto
Friday, June 3, 2005
I think it's important for all 49ers fans considering the team's new promotional video to remember that there's good news just around the corner, namely this:
Soon, they will be back to playing horrifying football, and we can forget this little institutional hiccup.
When we say "hiccup," we mean this overplayed tribute to arrested development, bad cinema, hinder-hiding, hypocrisy and good-natured treachery. When you have a scandal-ette in which the only principal who can legitimately feel victimized is the mayor of your town, you've got something truly special on your hands.
This will not be a treatise on the burdens of social responsibility or behavior, largely because those who look to the NFL for that sort of thing also expect the same high standards from numbers runners. The NFL is an amoral cash-generating exercise, rising to deal with standards and practices only when someone gets caught, and we have only about 16,000 examples. See the Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show for further edification.
For purposes of our discussion, though, we need only note that the notorious player video was insufficiently bothersome to the 49ers, from John York on down, right until the moment that the tape showed up in the office of Your Favorite Morning Paper. At that point, it became an outrage that cut to the core of what the franchise stands for.
Of course, during the last several years we've seen that the franchise will stand for just about anything, including the hiring of Typhoid Terry Donahue.
Therein lies the 49ers' truest regret.
Oh, they're not happy about having crossed Mayor Gavin Newsom at a time when they're trying to get him to cozy up to the idea of a new stadium. Putting your political clout in a PR vise is no way to keep him as your political clout.
Still, if you could get Tortoise-Shell Johnny to admit to his greatest sin, it was hiring Donahue in the first place.
That is, unless the master plan was to deface the brand name to Eddie DeBartolo-Hires-Joe Thomas levels.
Donahue helped make Bill Walsh inert in the 49er hierarchy (with York's active connivance). He spent a huge chunk of his time as general manager in Southern California, where the burdens of the work ethic would not unduly weigh upon him. He made personnel decisions that made your eyelids bleed.
Mostly, he spent his time in San Francisco taking care of himself.
Now, this.
Donahue has denied sending the tape to The Chronicle, but his denial is no more convincing than his assurances that he could fix the team. There is no incontrovertible proof that he did it, but circumstances point with neon- intensity toward him as the prime suspect. He had means (he'd had the tape for months), motive (he was angry at York for having fired him, and was all but convinced that public relations director/nascent movie producer Kirk Reynolds helped to get him fired), and having been fired in January eight months after his contract was extended, he had five months' worth of opportunity.
But even if you want to go with innocent-until-proven-treacherous, you still have the fact that because Donahue knew about the tape months earlier, he is at the very least as complicit as York. If Donahue had a problem with the tape, he could have killed it at the time, and if he didn't know about it, he should have.
In other words, Donahue hurt the 49ers coming, he hurt them while he was there, and he hurt them going. When you put it that way, he was even worse than Joe Thomas.
Across the bay, the Raiders are laughing at the 49ers' discomfort, as they always do. Having spent years aggressively rejecting the notions implicit in the words "public relations," they can only take great joy in watching the 49ers stewing in their own practiced foolishness. The Raiders may have only one hand on the rudder (Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal), but it is still one more hand than the 49ers.
Which brings us to coach Mike Nolan, the new big shot in town. He said that he wasn't involved and that he would never stand for such behavior, which raises three points:
1) We know you weren't involved.
2) As a coach, you would stand for anything that doesn't get in the way of winning that week's game.
3) Who asked you in the first place?
Nolan would have been much better off remaining silent and basking in the knowledge that he is now in better position to have his own PR man hired, someone more likely to mind his specific interests without the burdens of having history with the goofier aspects of the operation. Nolan is nobody's boob, and he can only help himself by distancing himself from the organization's sillier aspects (read -- everyone above him on the organizational chart). He is even closer to omnipotence than ever, and he hasn't won game one yet.
But we digress. The point is, Nolan distanced himself from a problem that wasn't his and in doing so comes off both blameless and proactive without having to do anything at all. Cynically, tactically brilliant.
Which marks the only thing about this "brew-ha-ha" that is.
York comes off -- again -- as a first-class ditherer, opportunist and hypocrite, thereby undoing that "he's really a good guy" PR blitz we were forced to endure in January. Reynolds is publicly chastened for making a crass and unfunny video for a specifically under-enlightened audience and leaving the evidence around to be used against him.
Donahue? One more brick on the pile that, when properly aligned by a competent mason and sculptor, reveals him to be the Worst Hire in Team History. They can wedge it between the third and fourth Super Bowl trophies for maximum viewing pleasure.
Yes, maximum viewing pleasure -- the principle that got them into all this trouble in the first place.
Ray Ratto
Friday, June 3, 2005
I think it's important for all 49ers fans considering the team's new promotional video to remember that there's good news just around the corner, namely this:
Soon, they will be back to playing horrifying football, and we can forget this little institutional hiccup.
When we say "hiccup," we mean this overplayed tribute to arrested development, bad cinema, hinder-hiding, hypocrisy and good-natured treachery. When you have a scandal-ette in which the only principal who can legitimately feel victimized is the mayor of your town, you've got something truly special on your hands.
This will not be a treatise on the burdens of social responsibility or behavior, largely because those who look to the NFL for that sort of thing also expect the same high standards from numbers runners. The NFL is an amoral cash-generating exercise, rising to deal with standards and practices only when someone gets caught, and we have only about 16,000 examples. See the Janet Jackson Super Bowl halftime show for further edification.
For purposes of our discussion, though, we need only note that the notorious player video was insufficiently bothersome to the 49ers, from John York on down, right until the moment that the tape showed up in the office of Your Favorite Morning Paper. At that point, it became an outrage that cut to the core of what the franchise stands for.
Of course, during the last several years we've seen that the franchise will stand for just about anything, including the hiring of Typhoid Terry Donahue.
Therein lies the 49ers' truest regret.
Oh, they're not happy about having crossed Mayor Gavin Newsom at a time when they're trying to get him to cozy up to the idea of a new stadium. Putting your political clout in a PR vise is no way to keep him as your political clout.
Still, if you could get Tortoise-Shell Johnny to admit to his greatest sin, it was hiring Donahue in the first place.
That is, unless the master plan was to deface the brand name to Eddie DeBartolo-Hires-Joe Thomas levels.
Donahue helped make Bill Walsh inert in the 49er hierarchy (with York's active connivance). He spent a huge chunk of his time as general manager in Southern California, where the burdens of the work ethic would not unduly weigh upon him. He made personnel decisions that made your eyelids bleed.
Mostly, he spent his time in San Francisco taking care of himself.
Now, this.
Donahue has denied sending the tape to The Chronicle, but his denial is no more convincing than his assurances that he could fix the team. There is no incontrovertible proof that he did it, but circumstances point with neon- intensity toward him as the prime suspect. He had means (he'd had the tape for months), motive (he was angry at York for having fired him, and was all but convinced that public relations director/nascent movie producer Kirk Reynolds helped to get him fired), and having been fired in January eight months after his contract was extended, he had five months' worth of opportunity.
But even if you want to go with innocent-until-proven-treacherous, you still have the fact that because Donahue knew about the tape months earlier, he is at the very least as complicit as York. If Donahue had a problem with the tape, he could have killed it at the time, and if he didn't know about it, he should have.
In other words, Donahue hurt the 49ers coming, he hurt them while he was there, and he hurt them going. When you put it that way, he was even worse than Joe Thomas.
Across the bay, the Raiders are laughing at the 49ers' discomfort, as they always do. Having spent years aggressively rejecting the notions implicit in the words "public relations," they can only take great joy in watching the 49ers stewing in their own practiced foolishness. The Raiders may have only one hand on the rudder (Uncle Al, the Kiddies' Pal), but it is still one more hand than the 49ers.
Which brings us to coach Mike Nolan, the new big shot in town. He said that he wasn't involved and that he would never stand for such behavior, which raises three points:
1) We know you weren't involved.
2) As a coach, you would stand for anything that doesn't get in the way of winning that week's game.
3) Who asked you in the first place?
Nolan would have been much better off remaining silent and basking in the knowledge that he is now in better position to have his own PR man hired, someone more likely to mind his specific interests without the burdens of having history with the goofier aspects of the operation. Nolan is nobody's boob, and he can only help himself by distancing himself from the organization's sillier aspects (read -- everyone above him on the organizational chart). He is even closer to omnipotence than ever, and he hasn't won game one yet.
But we digress. The point is, Nolan distanced himself from a problem that wasn't his and in doing so comes off both blameless and proactive without having to do anything at all. Cynically, tactically brilliant.
Which marks the only thing about this "brew-ha-ha" that is.
York comes off -- again -- as a first-class ditherer, opportunist and hypocrite, thereby undoing that "he's really a good guy" PR blitz we were forced to endure in January. Reynolds is publicly chastened for making a crass and unfunny video for a specifically under-enlightened audience and leaving the evidence around to be used against him.
Donahue? One more brick on the pile that, when properly aligned by a competent mason and sculptor, reveals him to be the Worst Hire in Team History. They can wedge it between the third and fourth Super Bowl trophies for maximum viewing pleasure.
Yes, maximum viewing pleasure -- the principle that got them into all this trouble in the first place.
