As the San Francisco 49ers head into the big NFC Championship weekend, Mayor London Breed is talking about her fandom starting back in the 80s in elementary and middle school — and about the time she met Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott.

SF native London Breed says she has a lot of great memories of the Niners' string of Super Bowl wins — five of them between 1981 and 1994. As she tells KPIX, "[It] made me so excited as a kid to watch the 49ers on TV and celebrate in the middle of the street when we would win the Super Bowl."

As a fan, she says, "I go very very far back, ever since elementary school."

And she recalls a particular proud moment, "when I went to Ben Franklin Middle School I played [French horn] in the advanced band … and one year when the 49ers won the Super Bowl there was a big celebration at the Fairmont Hotel and the 49ers invited our band to come and play, and we got to meet Joe Montana, we got to meet Ronnie Lott, we played all this great music and we had a wonderful time."

She adds, "Just imagine being a kid, looking up and going 'Ohmygod that's Joe Montana.' He is like the quarterback of quarterbacks."

London Breed as a high school student at Galileo High.


Regarding last weekend's playoff game against the Packers, Breed tells sports reporter Vern Glenn, "That game gave me about five new gray hairs."

Glenn asked Breed if she had a favorite 49er player when she was a student at Galileo High School.

"I loved Tom Rathman, because he would always come through," Breed says. "And I loved Ronnie Lott — he actually came to our school to talk to the kids... Loved Joe Montana, loved Jerry Rice. There were some great players back then."

And for this weekend's game down in LA, Breed says she has another wager with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti — after losing a bet with him back in October when the Giants lost to the Dodgers in Game 5 of the division series.

"After what happened with the Dodgers and the Giants, I am bitter," Breed tells Glenn. "I need the 49ers to make this right for San Francisco!"

And, she says, she's looking forward to seeing another "sea of red" at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, as 49ers fans flood in and hope to psych out the Rams.

"We’re going to bring that positive energy [to SoFi] to really take this one over the top!"

Elementary school photo of London Breed via LondonBreedforMayor.org