Welcome to the Hellmouth

John York said he was going to make a firm, quick decision about hiring a coach and we can't say that he hasn't been a man of his word- today the Niners have a new coach, Mike Nolan. Nolan, 45, has been the defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens, one of the best defensive teams in football, for the past several years and has had stints as the defensive coordinator for the Jets, Giants, and Redskins. Nolan also has major Bay Area roots, having went to High School at Woodside and cut his teeth coaching at Stanford. The reason for the Bay Area roots, and of most interest to Niners fans, was that his father, Dick Nolan, coached the Niners from 1968-1975 which probably means nothing to all those Niner fans who think the franchise just magically appeared out of nowhere in 1980.

The hiring of Nolan comes a bit of a surprise in that most of the papers were focused on the pair of Titans coordinators, especially that of their Offensive Coordinator Mike Heimdinger who not only is an advocate of the West Coast offense (remember when the Niners were known as offensive innovators?) but is a bit of a disciplinarian. York supposedly thought Mariucci was too much of a player's coach, which was one of the reasons for his firing. We all know how well that worked out. Nolan is known as a player's coach too, even letting Ravens' star linebacker Ray Lewis help make with the defensive game plans. Also, as coordinator of the Redskins, he was so well liked by owner Dan Snyder that Snyder tried to fire him twice, only to be saved each-time by then-coach Norv Tuner. Make of that what you will. All of this does make us wonder if Nolan was hired as much as a way of kissing butt to the Niners faithful as it was making the right choice.

Of course, all of this is kind of moot due to the fact York seems to have gone about all of this ass backwards. The hiring of the coach versus the hiring of football guy to run the team may seem like a chicken vs. the egg kind of question, except it isn't. Most teams- ie teams that win- hire the football guy first then the coach later. After all, a coach can't coach if he doesn't have anybody who can play. Right now, the Niners front office pretty much consists of a bunch of secretaries, a few interns, and Milton from Office Space. While Nolan does have some impeccable credentials, one has to worry when the three people who went around the country interviewing potential candidates were York, an ex-pathologist; Assistant Director of Football Administration Terry Tumey, an ex-coach, ex-player and ex-businessman; and 28 year-old Assistant to the General Manager Paraag Marathe, an ex-MBA student at Stanford. Yes, that's a lot of assistants. And yes, the name Paraag Marathe doesn't quite have that same football ring to it as say Bronco Nagurski. York seems to be trying to do some sort of Moneyball thing here (the current radical chic these days amongst owners who don't want to shell out money), thus Marathe. This is despite the fact there's no evidence that what works in baseball- and it's far from conclusive that it does work in baseball (see lack of banner saying "World Champion Oakland A's- 2000 to 2004")- works in football.

In other words, welcome aboard Mike Nolan. And good luck.