It's Friday-- Do You Know Where Your Football Team Is?
Dr. John York, the accidental owner, met the press to detail the whys and whats of his announcement that he's leaving San Francisco and taking the team to Santa Clara. The reason? It's too expensive here, the schools are falling apart, and it's better to raise a family in the Peninsula and not the city.
Oh wait, that's most of our friends, not the 49ers.
What he did say is sort of similar in a way in that he thinks it's too expensive to even do the things he was talking about doing earlier in building a stadium. York said that the plan to build a new stadium would cost about $600 to $800 million dollars but due to transportation improvements, including a new parking garage, the cost at Candlestick Point would be doubled. So throw in better public transportation (true dat-- Candlestick is a hassle to do it by bus) and Santa Clara makes sense. Or wherever he decides to move because he's not 100% sure about Santa Clara.
Santa Clara, meanwhile, was excited but a little stunned as York hadn't really told them about this whole thing and so doesn't have much in the way of a plan. Santa Clara and the spot near the Great America Amusement Park had always been talked about but there's a difference between talking about something and actually doing it. We've always talked about going to Amsterdam for a space cake fueled hooker binge but we haven't actually done it yet. So far.
Gavin meanwhile is a little pissy and said he feels blindsided, especially because he felt that they were oh so close to getting something put together. In an interview with KCBS he said that the Niners were "on the five yard line" and then added, "we're about to cross that finish line. All that work to get downfield and all of sudden, well, we don't want to cross that line." That's either a really bad mixed metaphor or Gavin has never watched a football game in his life.
Niners fans aren't taking it so well, calling it every sort of awful and heartbreaking and tragic. On KNBR, callers sounded like their dogs had died. Well, Niners fans, calm down, take a deep breath and let's look at things.
See, while baseball is moving towards urban stadiums, football is going in the opposite direction. Both New York teams play in New Jersey. The Washington Redskins play in Maryland and the Detroit Lions in Pontiac, not Detroit. Moving a team to a far away place isn't that big of a deal. And Santa Clara ain't exactly far. It is somewhat easier to get to by train or by bus and the reality is there's more Niners fans in the Peninsula than in San Francisco.
As for this being an awful, heartbreaking move, what one fan called "the worst franchise move in history" let's just say at one point in our life, we were huge Cleveland Browns fans. Our father was a Brooklyn Dodgers fans. Niners fans, we know heartbreaking franchise moves. This is not a heartbreaking franchise move. This is a hassle, nothing more, nothing less. Talk to us if York moves the team to LA, a new team moves into San Francisco and while York's LA team wins the Superbowl, the new San Francisco team has just one winning record in over seven years of existence. That, dear readers, is still the wors franchise move in history.