Bribery With Class?

As usual, NHS asks the questions the media dances around

At the end of last week's game review, we detailed the media's likely response to the latest crises facing the 49ers franchise: "First, expect the Jerry Rice comeback story to be played up beyond compare. Also, the DeBartolo saga, combined with the impending retirement of Joe Montana's jersey, makes for the perfect time to start looking at past glory to deflect criticism of the present."

And damn if we weren't right on the money. Want proof? On Thursday, the S.F. Chronicle ran a headline: "Rice Runs Route to Practice". The same day the San Jose Mercury showed a top-center picture of Jerry Rice with the caption, "Rice passes first test". On Friday, the front page of the Mercury sports section read, "Montana wore No. 16 but always will be No. 1".

There you have it. Rice then Montana, exactly as we picked it. Of course, it's not too hard to be right about these things, because the Bay Area media is as predictable as it is yellow.

By far the most laughable cover-up occurred Thursday night during halftime of the ESPN broadcast of the Oilers-Bengals game. There he was, the King of 49er Smoochers, Chris Berman, talking about Jerry Rice as "the best ever." Berman devoted a whole segment of national air time to Jerry and his 49ers, and not one breath was wasted on the two biggest stories to hit the 49ers in recent memory: the 49ers' easy schedule being exposed in a 44-9 drubbing, and the resignation of Eddie DeBartolo.

Just in case that maybe there are a couple people out there interested when an NFL owner resigns in the wake of fraud and bribery allegations, we now move on to the latter.

What they're not saying about Eddie D.

Lost amidst the flurry of allegations and innuendo surrounding the impending indictment of Eddie DeBartolo on fraud charges is the question: if DeBartolo has been perpetrating illegal activities in his business world affairs, what does this say about his dealings with the 49ers?

It's a question that no one seems to want to ask, yet it's one that should be examined nonetheless. Keeping in mind that at the present time DeBartolo has yet to even be charged with this latest crime, much less found guilty, we do know this much: his past has been less than stellar, what with his assault on a Green Bay fan last season, his illegal San Francisco campaign contributions, his cash settlement with a young lady that accused him of sexual assault, and the fine he received from the NFL after illegally paying his players incentive money for their on-field performance.

It is this last episode that speaks volumes to DeBartolo's particular "commitment to excellence" concerning the 49ers. It's an established fact that DeBartolo built the 49ers primarily through throwing gobs and gobs of money at the team. Aside from paying among the highest salaries seen in football throughout the 80's and now the 90's, DeBartolo garnered a reputation for "treating his players well", one that exists even today and, to the untrained eye, has been responsible for convincing high-priced talent to sign low contracts in the salary-cap controlled 90's.

DeBartolo crossed the line in 1987 when, after the 49ers clinched the division title, he gave each player a $10,000 bonus. Sounds generous, but it's against NFL rules, so the league slapped a $50,000 fine on DeBartolo. In a show of support for their benevolent owner, 50 49ers ponied up $1,000 each to cover the fine, meaning that Eddie D. ended up paying nothing out of his pocket for the transgression, and the players were still ahead a cool $9,000 of illegal money.

Fast forward to the early 90's. In an effort to control escalating salaries, the NFL implemented a salary cap to theoretically limit the amount of money teams could pay to players. Some theory -- just a few years later, the cap has been exposed by nearly every team as the farce that it is. Salaries are higher than ever, and every team has found dozens of nifty loopholes to slide fat contracts over, around, and through the ridiculous "cap". At the forefront of this creative accounting, naturally, was the 49ers.

Now, we can't necessarily fault the Niners for taking advantage of salary cap loopholes -- after all, the 80's had shown that DeBartolo and Co. would do anything to win, and if that meant taking advantage of loopholes, so be it. Someone was bound to do it; it just so happened that the pioneer was the 49ers, and if the NFL ownership was stupid enough to implement a cap and still allow such lucrative ways around it, then they have no one to blame but themselves. On a pure sportsmanship level, one can disparage the 49ers for going against the spirit of the rules, but again, the bottom line is trying to win, and there aren't any style points awarded.

The problem for DeBartolo arose when every other NFL team started copying San Francisco's salary cap circumvention techniques. Suddenly, the cap ceased to be a major problem for many teams, and the Niners quickly lost whatever advantage they had in that arena. The Niners bought their last Super Bowl title in 1994, winning the big game with many free-agent imports that signed contracts for less than market value because they "wanted a chance to win". Among those hired guns was Deion Sanders, the Cowboys corner who is now the antichrist to most Niner fans, after being a godsend in 1994.

Speaking of Deion, the Cowboys played the Niners' game and signed him to a huge contract in 1995, helping to ensure their title that season. Suddenly, it became apparent that the 49ers weren't going to be able to get by solely on the salary cap manipulation game, because owners like Jerry Jones of the Cowboys were doing the exact same thing, if not doing it better. And that takes us where we are today.

The Niners, so accustomed to repeated success, dropped out of the playoffs early in both 1995 and 1996. Perhaps sensing that the team was aging and only had enough for one last push with the current nucleus of players, DeBartolo had his minions busy again this offseason, and the results were startling. Helped once again by the good old "wanting a chance to win" excuse, the Niners scooped up players like Rod Woodson (a former multiple Pro-Bowl talent) and Garrison Hearst (a former top-five draft pick who was finally showing flashes of his college success), and San Francisco signed them at rates below what other teams were willing to offer. In the case of Hearst, he took a contract near the league minimum while another team was offering him five times as much.

The free-agent farce continued when former Niner mainstay Jesse Sapolu, who was forced into retirement by San Francisco after last season, was lured back onto the field because the Niner offensive line was a mess. Not surprisingly, he was offered the NFL minimum by the team, and for a short time showed some integrity by holding out for more, but in the end, he did the standard Niner cave-in by signing for the minimum plus incentives. The final slap in the face came when Kevin Greene, holding out for more money from the Carolina Panthers, signed a contract with the Niners for less money than he would have received from the Panthers under his original contract!

All of this begs the question: What's going on over there? So far, two reasons have always been cited as the reasons the Niners seem to be the only team that repeatedly signs players to contracts below their market value. The standard party lines from the players:

"I want to go where I have a chance to win": Fine and dandy, but if you'll notice, other teams offer this chance as well. Since unrestricted free agency began, the Niners have won one Super Bowl, which is as many as Green Bay and the Redskins, and two less than Dallas. While the Niners have been successful for quite a while now, at the time of these free agent signings they offer no better of a chance at winning a Super Bowl than several other teams. Remember, at the start of the year -- when Greene jumped ship -- the only thing separating the Niners and Panthers was a softer schedule for San Francisco. Many pundits picked the Panthers to win the division, so there was no reason for Greene to feel he was getting a better chance of success with the Niners as opposed to the Panthers. Year-in and year-out, teams like Denver, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, and Dallas (and, lately, Green Bay) have a chance to win the big game as well, but no one flocks to their teams to sign low-ball contracts. So is it because:

"The Niners treat their players better": How? Do they have caviar in the locker room after the game? Are their uniforms washed twice a day instead of once? Or is because the players hope that DeBartolo forks down some illegal incentive payment for their performance like he did in '87, or they hope that he pays for all of their families to go to Hawaii like he did after one Super Bowl victory? Whatever the case, one would think that a player could buy his own caviar or pay for his own trip to Hawaii with some of the extra $500,000 or more he might make from signing with a team other than the Niners.

The only other reason for players signing small contracts is the one that always goes unsaid: that maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on behind the scenes. Given DeBartolo's propensity for throwing money at problems, maybe he's flowing players (and even agents) some money behind the scenes, under the table, to compensate for their smaller "official" contracts.

Yes, the Niner fan will immediately sneer "jealousy" and say that it's inconceivable, but is it? After all, part of DeBartolo's indictment for fraud involves an illegal payment made on his part to the governor of Louisiana, to help procure a gambling license. Extend the metaphor -- if DeBartolo is capable of doing that, and if in fact he has already done it, what's to say he's not doing it on another level with the 49ers? It sure would go a long way to explaining why free agents repeatedly stand in line to sign small contracts with San Francisco.

As one observer stated after the indictment, "If someone is caught with one hand in the cookie jar, wouldn't it make sense to check their other hand?" Of course, it makes perfect sense, but the NFL has shown repeatedly that it wants little to do with policing the 49er franchise. Massive contracts like Steve Young's, which both the Niners and Young's agent admitted was a farce, passed by the NFL watchdogs with nary a second glance. Dallas was fined for an illegal injury listing a couple years back, but when the Niners lied about Steve Young's broken rib last year, the league didn't lift a finger. Paul Tagliabue has already come out and said he supported DeBartolo's transfer of control to his sister, of all people, so don't expect any kind of investigation on the matter.

Regardless, those that know better, like the NHS, understand that there is a very real possibility of significant behind-the-scenes action going on at Niner Central. Given the tons of rumors that have always surrounded DeBartolo's "business dealings", and this latest run-in concerning fraud, it makes sense that in his quest to get the big ring every year, Eddie D. may have circumvented the salary cap not only legally, but illegally as well. Will the truth ever be known? We're not sure, but like Special Agent Mulder, we'll keep asking, and maybe someday we'll find out.

Media will be no help
In the meantime, we understand that we'll be on our own in the search for the truth. The media will be busy with deflecting your attention in amazing ways. For example, on Thursday, one Chronicle columnist wrote a column with the headline, "[O]wner's approach is an embarrassment to team". What's wrong with that, you ask? What DeBartolo did is certainly an embarrassment, right?
The problem is that the column wasn't talking about DeBartolo, it was talking about Al Davis! Yes, that's right -- in the middle of the DeBartolo fiasco, the Chronicle felt it time to make a statement about Davis -- a statement that rightfully should have been in reference to Eddie.

On Thursday, the Mercury printed that DeBartolo said, "the 49ers truly are his identity." We agree. In terms of image, the team and the man have been inseparable. So if it turns out that DeBartolo is in fact guilty of fraud, we'll be expecting the media to print, "49ers' image a fraud". Okay, stop laughing.

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