But you knew it was a parody issue from the cover story about Paraag Marathe, one of the MBA's running the 49ers, saying he was made a "scapegoat" and is "really the future of the NFL." The piece claims "football guys no longer drive the league," which would surprise Bill Polian and Tony Dungy, Tim Ruskell and Mike Holmgren, Jerry Angelo and Lovie Smith, Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli and Mike Shanahan, to name some of the people running the NFL's best teams.
It also says that, because of the salary cap, "the importance of signing and retaining stars (is) greatly diminished." Right. That must be why Irsay went into personal debt to re-sign Peyton Manning and Harrison.
One part of the piece is right. Don't blame Marathe. Blame ownership for giving him power. That helps explain why the 49ers have the worst record in the league over the last three seasons and so little talent on the roster.
http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/FIRST-DOWNS-2544318.php
Nolan, though, has been hinting gently but clearly that he now understands the full depth and breadth of the 49ers' dysfunctionality, even the parts for which he must take direct responsibility. And if he has been given the control John York promised he would have that day at the Mark Hopkins, we'll know quickly enough.
He has already said he intends to get a veteran football man inside the building, a failing that showed itself most clearly in September, when Nolan basically sucked all the trade value out of linebacker Jamie Winborn, and then traded him for what is essentially a copy machine.
And it can't be just a pipe-smoking brainiac sitting near the mail room thinking about concepts and theories, but a full-blown expert of current league personnel, college talent, and their migraine-carrying agents. Nolan needs a general manager who knows what Nolan wants, which players can serve that need, and what is required to make those things happen.
It needs to be someone who, in concert with Nolan, can tell York and his adjutants Paraag Marathe and Terry Tumey what is to be done, and leave them to figure out the financial math. You know, make it a football organization, rather than an organization that does football.
If Nolan can make that happen, he'll at least succeed or fail with his own best judgment. If not, he may as well start looking for his next gig, because this one will offer nothing for him. He won't be the face of the franchise after all, but merely a talking head, and that's not what he, and the customers, were promised that shiny day last January, when all but York's most aggressive critics started to see signs that he could be taught.
This move with take considerable political skill, given that Nolan will (or at least should) be challenging York's judgment of the way a football franchise should be run. York has placed the business department ahead of the football operation, and the proof of that is actually a pull-out quote from the SF Weekly cover story/panegyric of Marathe:
"The name of the game is not finding the best players, as conventional wisdom says," Marathe is quoted as saying. "The name of the game is finding the best possible players for the lowest price. It's just being smart about managing your money."
Well, no it isn't. The NFL has set up a salary system so structured and management-friendly that the name of the game actually is finding the best players and then making the money fit the talent. Contracts are not guaranteed, and players are released before their sell-by date routinely. The "salary-cap hell," which so colors each of the 49ers' decisions, is not only easily avoidable, but is done so routinely every year by every good football team in the league. Each of those teams has football people making the decisions and business people making those decisions fit -- not the other way around.
York, Marathe and Tumey reject this simple notion because it works against their top-down, we've-got-the-spreadsheets-and-we'll-tell-you-what-you-need management instincts. They claim that it is really just misunderstanding their clever postmodern precepts, and Marathe also throws in a gratuitous claim in the SF Weekly piece that the abuse he takes in the media and in the stands would be 85 percent lower if he were white, older, and had an Anglicized name.
Not a lot of business or mathematical expertise in that characterization.
In fact, the real problem is not that he is too young, too dark, or too adept with PowerPoint. It isn't even about him. It's about two conflicting philosophies of how to run an NFL team. Is it business first, then football, or is it football first, then business? And given that you make a lot more money and win a lot more credit and customers with a winning team than with a losing one, the answer should be even more obvious.
Or does going 3-13 (or best case scenario, 4-12) seem like a good use of the franchise's name to you?
In short, Nolan has to get a contemporary football expert in the building, in a place of both influence and control, and soon. Otherwise, there's really no point in him being here, because there is no future in being the face of the franchise when other people have control of the strings.
http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/Time-for-Nolan-to-put-on-a-good-face-2524613.php
A decade later, this franchise remains in the same exact place, different HC, same issue. With the same people in charge who are driving this team into the ground.
, I got a gut feeling it might have been a local kid that ran a WCO in college.
