Forever Wrong

49er Problem ushers Young into Hall of Fame

August 5, 2005 (NHS) -- With the Class of 2005 NFL Hall Of Fame induction looming, the media embarked on their predictable little remembrance of "the Best Ever" Steve Young, replete with all the arrogance, ignorance, hypocrisy and double-standards you'd expect.

The media show was just what the Bandwagon needed. It made their fellow 49er fans forget for a moment that their current team is in the toilet. Most importantly, it hid the truth that Young's entrance is the biggest affront to the legitimacy of the Hall since the sham inclusion of Ronnie Lott.

Basically, it was so people could smile and say, "Gee, how nice, they let Joe Montana's ugly step-sister go to the prom, too."

And with that, legitimate football fans once again had their enjoyment of a HOF class interrupted with the 49er Problem. The coverage leading up to event was naturally slanted for Young with that same-old little extra spice they only reserve for 49ers. Clearly, the media agenda was to give the impression that there's something just a wee-bit more special about Young entering the Hall -- as opposed to those other boring guys that were just truly great football players, like fellow-inductee Dan Marino.

Meanwhile, the local media efforts were, of course, hilarious in their hypocrisy. One local columnist wrote that he'd "never met a finer person" than Steve Young during his 25-year stint as a reporter. The San Jose Mercury had an entire special section in their Friday, August 5th edition, wrapped around their usual sports section, entitled, "Memories of a Legend". Young was even the honorary starter at a car race on Saturday in downtown San Jose, showing the egregious extent to which this crap was being milked in the Bay Area.

Once again, it seems like only Niner-haters have lucid memories of how the locals really felt about Young. Despite the media's pretending, not one person in the Bay Area considers Young a "legend". He has always been, and always will be, the lesser, pale alternative to Montana in their hearts and minds. They hated him from the start in the "Steve v. Joe" days. That lack of respect never went away. In fact, these same people once voted that Young should be replaced by Elvis Grbac (before Elvis, in turn, became "an embarrassment to humankind", according to their lovable ex-Mayor).

Now these same people are pretending they had some special love affair with Young? Pathetic.

Which is exactly why these people are called "The Bandwagon".

But even as they pile on and beat the Bandwagon drum about all of Young's supposedly "best ever" credentials, we at the NHS also retain an accurate memory of Young's actual accomplishments. His main claim to fame is passed on the NFL's insipid "Passer Rating System", a completely flawed number based on opinion, not statistics.

In 1996 we wrote a hypothetical to debunk the PRS, not knowing how prescient it would be almost a decade later, since it involved both Young and Marino:

[Llet's say the 49ers are playing the Dolphins. On the 49ers' first drive, Steve Young completes three 3-yard slant passes to Jerry Rice ... the 49ers have to punt on fourth-and-one. The Dolphins get the ball and Dan Marino misses two long bombs, but on third down he completes a 48-yard toss to O.J. McDuffie. First down, Dolphins ...

... but stop the game and look at the passer ratings. Young, 3-3 for 9 yards, QB rating of 69. Marino, 1-3 for 48 yards (he's moved his team over FIVE TIMES as far as Young!), QB rating of 68.

Obviously this makes no sense. (See: Debunking the NFL's Ridiculous "Passer Rating System".)

In short, Young's biggest shtick -- his gaudy "passer rating" statistic -- is worthless mathematical rhetoric that has no relation to performance on a football field. Worse, the disgusting Wuss Coast Offense artificially inflates this PRS statistic, further proving its uselessness. As GQ Magazine of all places put it, "You couldn't invent a better scheme to juice QB rating numbers. Because, it turns out, the formula mathematically whacks guys who try to throw long." Young's rating, just like Montana's, was clearly artificially-juiced by the WCO, a benefit that no other QBs in the Hall got to pad their stats with.

Young's other accomplishment is his lone championship, which was highlighted this week by the critics of Marino. Thanks to the imbecilic "escaping the shadow of Montana" angle, this one championship has been exaggerated to epic proportions for Young individually even though championships are won by a team, not one guy (see: Jeff Hostetler, Trent Dilfer). Because they perpetuate this fallacy, not one of the so-called "experts" in the media will mention today that Young couldn't win his little "monkey off his back" ring until the 49ers brought Deion Sanders and a boatload of former Pro Bowl free agents to their defense in 1994 under suspicious spending circumstances despite the newly-enacted free agent / salary cap changes that year.

Deion, Ken Norton, Gary Plummer, Rickey Jackson, and the rest signed for far less than their market value because of given reasons like "we want to win a ring" and that they'd "make it up in endorsements", but who knows what exactly was going on under the table? Indeed, years later the 49ers finally did get busted for cheating the salary cap. Yet not one word will be printed that if Young's championship was thanks to a defense that was only on the field because of cheating, it should contain an asterisk. Worse, Young's contract was later among those designed purposefully to cheat the salary cap, for which his agent, Leigh Steinberg, was fined thousands of dollars. Some would consider that a crime far worse than anything Pete Rose ever did to baseball.

In short, Young does not deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. He's there thanks to one thing -- the 49er Problem. For the complete discussion, see our white paper entitled, "The Case Against Steve Young" [coming soon].

MORONS v. MARINO

The truly sad thing is that this ruse is taking place at the same time Marino is entering the Hall. (You might remember Marino as the guy that owns every meaningful passing record in history, silly little things like "yards" and "touchdowns".)

Using the logic the Bandwagon applies to Jerry Rice, owning every significant passing record should make Marino the hands-down "GOAT" (Greatest Of All-Time). But, alas, we all know that label can and will only be applied by the media to 49ers -- and no one else. It's certainly not because of consistent logic. It's pure 49er Bandwagon mentality, and in this case, the media worked overtime towards their agenda of treating Young as "more great" than Marino despite the records.

In the week leading up to the HOF game, you had to look hard for an article on Marino. If you did a news search for "NFL Hall of Fame" (like we did), you'd see several stories about Young then interspersed here and there an after-thought about Marino. For example, our search of the sports headlines archives on Yahoo! News spanning August 3rd thru 5th divulged three headlines mentioning the name "Young" versus one for "Marino". So in terms of national big media the ratio was 3:1 Young to Marino hype.

There was also a "neutral" headline about the Hall that didn't mention either player by name, but when opened it, too, was another pro-Young piece. This particularly reprehensible story spouted that Roger Staubach -- a legitimate great who owned the record for passer rating before rules changes watered down the game -- is allegedly similar to Young.

You'll note that Staubach's only actual quote about greatness was, "Dan Marino is as good a quarterback as has ever played in the NFL and he's being recognized for that." But instead of focusing on that, the ass-kissing "journalist" took it upon herself to pervert the occasion into four paragraphs arguing, "Staubach's career more closely resembled Young's" -- thus shoving Marino into the closet.

Funny, if there is a comparison to draw, you would think it would be the link between Marino to the Staubach era, where passer ratings were earned on real patterns caught because of great downfield throws and exceptional talent, not 2-yard dink passes that any chump can throw and catch. Then also consider that Young's tiny little total of career passing yards (when compared to Marino's) looks even sillier when you realize most of it was probably that run-after-the-catch garbage that is still inexplicably credited to the quarterback. Truly, because of this new era of rules, quarterback stats need an overhaul -- and a new view on "greatness".

But don't expect that to be coming soon from our lovable pro-Niner media. We're stuck with AP sports writers like Bay Area homer Greg Beacham, 49er-ass-kisser extraordinaire, pushing his "best ever" opinion of Young that is then disseminated around the world building a cult of ignorance.

What about the AP's story giving equal time touting Marino? Heh, it's more a hate piece than a tribute to Marino.

Notice the key difference: The article about Young fails to contain one negative, as if the reporter has never even considered things like how Young stabbed Montana in the back to get his job, or how he couldn't win unless Deion was there, or how he cheated the salary cap.

But the reporter supposedly assigned to touting Marino dedicates three paragraphs to the "contrarians" that focus on Marino's lack of winning a championship, concluding, "In truth, it likely eliminates Marino from consideration as the game's greatest quarterback."

The difference is laughable. Implied "best ever" versus explicitly "not best ever". Equal time? No. Just the same old 49er double-standard, where the media pretends that no 49er contrarians exist and censors our opinion.

There's no denying the media's intent. The simple fact is the industry -- from the writers to the editors, from newspapers to websites -- is mostly filled with 49er fans, many of them from the Bay Area, and they want their insipid little opinion that Young was better than Marino to be happily swallowed by the clueless masses that are unaware of the effect of propaganda. It's simply a selfish act by petty people.

Oh, sure, they have their rationalizations like the "Marino never won a championship!" cry. Well, gee, maybe if Miami had cheated the salary cap and had a corporation give kick-backs to Deion to play for them, perhaps Marino would have. Or perhaps if the Super Bowl that Marino did make it to wasn't a home game for the 49ers at Stanford -- a very fishy venue coincidence that never happened before or since Eddie DeBartolo -- but, hey, that's just a conspiracy theory, right?

Anyway, this isn't a time for truth, it's a time to celebrate Steve Young!

BANDWAGON TO THE END

As for the festivities themselves, at least in terms of fan representation the balance was finally correct. Apparently of those attending, "75% had on Dolphins jerseys," according to NFL.com, as the Miami fans paid their due to Dan.

Perhaps the most enlightening tidbit of the ceremony we found was at a small paper in Lenawee, MI, The Daily Telegram, where apparently you can still find an uncensored voice in the media. The writer had a good time at the HOF but listed two complaints. One was the pervasive ugly color of Dolphins jerseys, and if teal's not his thing, fair enough. The other was a complaint about "the lack of grace shown by 49ers fans who shuffled out" after Young was honored but before Marino.

Gee, who would have guessed it? The Bandwagon fans only caring about their Whiner du jour then showing complete arrogance, ignorance and disrespect of a great player, the Hall, and the game itself by leaving once their little Bandwagon part was over?

What a shocker. After all, they are the same "Faithful" that wanted to replace Young with Elvis.

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