Bandwagon Discontent w/ New Regime

NOW IS THE WINTER OF BANDWAGON DISCONTENT

Transition to New Regime Showing Promise

May 28, 2003 (NHS) -- A final payment of reportedly $70 million will be paid to Eddie DeBartolo from Denise and John York sometime this summer, officially ending any ties the infamous Eddie D. has to the 49ers.

Carmen Policy was jettisoned years ago, and he's still singing the refrain of "Wait 'til Next Year" to the poor Browns fans (even though all the "experts" predicted it was a foregone conclusion the "Master Capologist" would have bought -- er, brought -- a championship to Cleveland by now).

Steve Mariucci, who became the most overrated coach in football by kissing media ass instead of actually beating any winning teams to speak of, was sent packing to join Matt Millen in Detroit, forming yet another 49er-braintrust-in-exile.

Bill Walsh has one more year on his contract in his role as whatever it is he does for the 49ers, but he has already cleaned out his office, and Terry Donahue has in essence taken over.

Yes, the 49er house has been almost completely fumigated. Today's 49ers are virtually devoid of the sleazy cockroaches that comprised the evil empire we came to know and hate over the past two decades, leaving only the question:

Where do things go from here?

Have Niner-haters have finally reached the crossroads that we have all wished for since the 1980s? Is the 49er Problem finally over? Or is the new regime going to be just as cheesy and sleazy? Are the Bandwagon's arrogance, ignorance, hypocrisy and double-standards going to come roaring back to their former hateful strength? Or are we Niner-haters finally past the dark times?

Well, let's check out some recent events that have highlighted this transition period for some hints on if it's just going to be business as usual or if the new regime is actually, finally, something different:

Bottled Watergate. Maybe you haven't heard of it, but much hoopla was made by 49er insiders like the beat writers and local talk show hosts about how Dr. York installed water filters throughout the 49ers' headquarters, replacing the more expensive bottled water they've had for years. It was decried as a sign of a new era of penny-pinching in Ninerland, an unimaginable horror in the minds of the press that still sit pining away for "the good old days" of the free-spending, freebie-spreading Eddie D. This in turn led to more talk of...
A budget. Since York took over, he put a plan in place to reign in the overall spending of the franchise. Starting this offseason, that budget is officially in place. According to ESPN.com, that change created "anxiety". Uh, more like that change was greeted as blasphemy by many Niner "faithful", many of who realize that if the 49ers don't have an owner willing to pour out his family fortune to buy a ring, the Niners are screwed.
Goodbye, Mooch; hello, Dennis. Mariucci was a DeBartolo/Policy pick, and despite his reported problems with Walsh looking his nose down on him, Mooch was very much a member of the old regime in that he ran the Walsh offense and spouted the same old company line of "the 49er Way". Tossing him out on his keister and hiring Dennis Erickson, who has no ties to the Walsh family of coaching, was a big split from the past.
Pull-out from Stockton. The 49ers broke their training camp lease with the University of Pacific. Instead of the public practices in Stockton and Rocklin, the 49ers will have their camp at their facilities in Santa Clara. Aside from one or two open days, the only public invited will be money-making deals through their corporate sponsors. Once again, the media hailed this as a dark cost-cutting/profit-seeking omen, and fans reacted even worse. "I think it stinks," a president of a 49ers fan club told the SJ Mercury, "To cut off the fans like that, it hurts. None of us are happy." In addition, the buzz from the local NHS membership is that the reason the Niners were ever in Stockton in the first place was a shady deal involving Eddie D. and Chargers owner/UOP President Al Spanos. York broke the lease to break yet another tie to the old regime.
Meaningful performance matters. OT Derrick Deese was told by Erickson's coaching staff that he may be on his way out. This was quite a slap in the face to Deese, of course, who has become accustomed to years of being incredibly overrated over his entire 49ers career. According to the S.F. Chronicle, Deese was told "only his postseason performance was relevant to his future with the team". Translation: all those meaningless regular season games against the bad teams that make up the 49ers' schedule are -- gasp! -- actually meaningless in the eyes of the new coaches. This is a huge deviation from the past when guys who padded their stats against the NFC Worst sheep were placed on a pedestal by the Bandwagon. Unfortunately, Donahue recently announced Deese would not be a June 1 cut, so it remains to be seen if this little episode will have any lasting effect.
Not ready for prime-time. The NFL schedule makers and television networks only awarded the 49ers two prime-time games this season. Usually, the NFL and network cronies like Al Michaels do anything possible to get the 49ers on prime-time. Given the 49ers were the "best ever NFC West champs", one would think they had the perfect excuse to televise the 49ers every week this year. After all, the NFL and TV execs made no apologies for last season's unheard of five (5) prime-time appearances for the Niners, even though the acknowledged maximum any one team can have in one season is four. So either the NFL is just making up for the ridiculous number last year, holding a grudge against the 49ers, or they know something about how good the 49ers are going to be this year.
Down-graded by friends. ESPN.com gave their beloved 49ers a "C-" for their draft, the lowest grade we've seen since the NHS was born in the mid-'90s. In truth, the 49ers' draft was not worse than average since they got a solid first-rounder, made no huge reaches, and even provided some excitement in the Dorsey flier. In the past this draft would have had ESPN tripping over themselves to give the 49ers an "A+", but it is obvious ESPN was bent on snubbing the 49ers because "The Genius" is no longer calling the shots.

These developments make it clear that there's something different bubbling up within the Bandwagon. The average 49er fan may not be consciously aware of it yet, but make no beans about it, those inside NFL circles are not only aware of it, but many are livid over the current state of the 49ers and the way the old regime has been cast aside.

This behind-the-scenes negativity within the NFL and media has already influenced the Bandwagon fans. After all, hardly a yawn came from S.F. after the draft, usually the time of the year when you can't shut a Bandwagoner up from spouting about the 49ers' upcoming "best ever Super Bowl run". Instead, we got Dallas-hater/Niner-lover Skip Bayless actually writing in the SJ Mercury, "The league-wide view is that the 49ers are on the verge of mediocrity."

It seems things at Ninerland are shaping up as good as any Niner-hater could hope. The old regime is all but stamped out of existence. Those loyal to DeBartolo, Walsh and Mariucci in the NFL and media are carrying an axe to grind against York, Donahue, Erickson. The new regime bungled their first real task when they screwed up the firing and hiring process of their new coach, so their credibility with the fans is low.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect for Niner-haters is the absence of homogeneity in the football world now in its view towards the 49ers. For many, a big piece of what made the 49er Bandwagon so hated was its uniqueness in being such a united front of arrogance, ignorance, hypocrisy, and double-standards. For two decades, every piece of the NFL, media, and 49ers was on the same page of shoveling the pro-Niner propaganda. Ten years ago, you could not ever read or hear a disparaging word against the 49ers from any player, coach, reporter or waterboy in the NFL or media. As a result, it seemed that every Niner fan was a brainwashed duplicate of another, all entrenched in the "best ever" mentality that defined the Niner fan as the worst among football fandom. Need we remind you of the days that sportscasters actually got away with peddling with a straight face that "Jerry Rice is not only the best receiver ever, but the best football player ever"?

It sounds ridiculous now, and that's a mark of how far the Bandwagon has fallen. Today, the facade is fractured, the Problem is not as pure. The blind, united loyalty to the 49ers in the NFL and media has become spread thin as the old regime has been scattered into the wind. Without the driving forces of Eddie's dirty money, Carmen's lying tongue, Walsh's never-ending self-promotion and Mariucci's crusade to have every piece of the media love him, the glue binding the Bandwagon may finally becoming undone.

But before we get to optimistic, let's remember that in 2000, many wrote the obituary for the 49er Bandwagon before it came roaring back as soon as the easy schedule kicked in again. It grew to last year becoming arguably the biggest year of the 49er Problem, with the joke of a division title handed to them, the unprecedented five prime-time games, the referee-blundered playoff "win", the ridiculous selection of six overrated 49ers to the Pro Bowl, and Terrell Owens' punk antics being rationalized and him hailed as "the most exciting player in football".

Will 2002 go down as a climax of the 49er Problem or are there even worse days ahead? We'll see. A lot of it will have to do with if the 49ers win or lose, which is and always will be the primary concern of the Niner Faithful's "loyalty" to the team, of course.

One thing seems pretty firm: if the 49ers go out and lay an egg of a season under Erickson, the Bandwagon could finally be damaged with some permanence. That's because unlike in 2000, the 49ers don't have the old regime around that the Bandwagon was weaned on. These new Niners weren't responsible for the "glory days", so they won't be given as many excuses or chances, or even the benefit of the doubt, by the Bandwagon.

But the odds of the 49ers having a bad season are astronomical given that their pathetic schedule and lack of competition within the NFC Worst is exactly the same or even worse than in the past. With just five games against winning teams on their schedule, the 49ers would have to utterly suck to avoid sleepwalking their way to an undeserved decent record and the playoffs again.

This has been enough for most of the Bandwagon since the mid-'90s and the days of the lovable Mooch, but Erickson might have to bear the brunt of a growing restlessness in the Bandwagon. Fact is, the 49ers haven't gone to the Super Bowl since the end of the 1994 season, which is very painful for Niner fans who, more than any other group, base their entire existence on the end all, be all of winning the Super Bowl. Consequently, a lot of the Bandwagon has grown weary of the meaningless winning that defined the tenure of Mariucci. Many 49er fans were more than happy that good ol' Mooch was shoved out the door. So if the Niners come out in 2003 and do the same old thing -- i.e., gather 10 meaningless wins while losing to every winning team they face -- is there going to be the traditional big Bandwagon rally for Erickson?

Maybe. After all, the biggest punk in the NFL, Owens, is still there being lionized by many fickle Whiner fans, along with many other amazingly overrated players like Jeff Garcia and Julian Peterson. The media could be ready to hop back on and start churning out more heroes for the fans, such as Tai Streets and Fred Beasely, perhaps as early as that tough season-opener at home against the Bears.

But Carmen Policy once remarked that it's not enough to win in San Francisco, you "have to do things with pizzazz". This was basically his spin to describe all the cheating, lying, underhanded moves made by the 49ers during Carmen's reign that just added to the media's delight and Bay Area fans' love of the 49ers.

The 49er Bandwagon loves a celebrity and scandal much more than they love the game of football, and fact is they find York, Donahue and Erickson flat-out boring. So even if Erickson wins, he might have to dip into some ghosts from his own Miami past -- by taking a trip to the drunk tank, a money scam, some drugs, etc. -- to generate that "pizzazz" that the Bay Area craves in to get the Bandwagon to really love him. Otherwise, the Bandwagon is poised to jump ship after just one bad loss, and this time it could be for real.

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