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Fixing broken class: from hiring a coach to selecting a franchise quarterback, through a videotape scandal and the tragic loss of a player, this is the inside story of the 49ers' restoration

Sporting News, The, Sept 23, 2005 by Paul Attner

The 49ers' owner stands in the middle of the locker room, carrying a football. "A lot of you were here last year, but there is one guy who wasn't," says John York. He hands the football to his new coach, and the players cheer as Mike Nolan holds it high. They close in, raise up their arms as one, reaching to touch the ball. It is a sweet moment--a moment 240 days in the making.

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In the context of a season, of course, one victory can be buried by weeks of decline. But for a franchise once so majestic that all others stood jealous, admiring its five Super Bowl trophies, even this season-opening 28-25 victory over the Rams last Sunday is one to relish. It is joy for a franchise that just last January, coming off a 2-14 embarrassment, lacked structure, direction or strong leadership--a joke of a place with an awful stadium and weak ownership. This was a team stripped of playmakers and hope, without a general manager, coach, president, personnel director or any veteran front office football sage. And now a win.

But it is more than that. It is a team mostly young but with an unlikely maturity grown from an offseason like none other--an offseason marred by fallout from news that a club official had produced a racially and culturally offensive in-house videotape; an offseason turned tragic by the nightmare of watching teammate Thomas Herrion die in the locker room after a preseason game. It was almost more than they all could take.

"You think of what these guys have been through--so much, it's hard for anyone to understand. It seems like five seasons already," says Nolan, sitting alone 90 minutes after the game. "I am so happy for them."

It is mid-January when York identifies Nolan as the coach he hopes can return days like this to the 49ers. This is an intimate look at what has happened since then, an extraordinary 240 days for a franchise wanting so desperately to become dominant again.

The hiring

John York and Mike Nolan laugh about it now, how the new coach of the 49ers came so close to never being the coach.

Nolan had done poorly in an NFL- produced interview tape, and York wants to drop him from a list of candidates that included Jim Schwartz and Mike Heimerdinger, both of the Titans, Romeo Crennel of the Patriots and Tim Lewis of the Giants. But York's son, Jed, 24, and Paraag Marathe, 28, a Stanford MBA and soon to be 49ers cap guru, are intrigued by Nolan and persuade York to keep him on the list.

This is a hire York must get right. In 2003, when the 49ers last needed a coach, general manager Terry Donahue conducted the search without help, and he chose Dennis Erickson. But now both have been fired and York, who owns the team with his wife, Denise DeBartolo York, will run the coaching pursuit himself. At his behest, Marathe already had culled a pool of candidates by first identifying the NFL's 10 most successful coaches over the past 20 years and then determining common characteristics, which are used to compile a group of possibilities. From those, five are chosen.

During York's six years in charge, the 49ers have gradually disintegrated. He came in believing the franchise was like any of his other businesses. "It was a mistake," he says. Football, he finds, isn't a normal business, not with all the fan interest and media scrutiny. Then he errs again by firing coach Steve Mariucci after winning the NFC West in 2002. He is savaged regularly in the local media, which dismisses him as incompetent. But this new coach will represent the first step in showing that York has learned, that he can turn the 49ers into winners again. "I don't agree with what is said about me," he says, "but nothing will change until we win."

On January 13, Nolan, the Ravens' defensive coordinator, has a dazzling interview. "He's on an expressway going 70 miles an hour," says York. "The others sometimes hit a bump and wander off, but not Mike. He's figured out how to pave the road all the way."

Even after 18 years in the league, Nolan, 46, has never lusted after a head coaching job. But almost from the minute the 49ers contact him, this seems right. Some of it is because his dad, Dick, coached the club from 1968-75, winning three division titles. But even more, it's because of his own experiences. He has carefully developed beliefs about how to build a strong team around three basics: personnel, structure and chemistry. The 49ers urgently need all three.

An hour after another interview on January 16, Nolan is offered the job. He and his wife, Kathy, travel the next day to Youngstown, Ohio, where the Yorks live. After a family meal, Nolan and York discuss the coach's contract. At dinner before his first interview, Nolan had aggressively questioned York about his reputation for being cheap and difficult. Nolan wants to know how York will fix the 49ers; he is told the Yorks will spend what it takes, even family money, to get it right. Now, they disagree about two sections of the contract, including one that gives York say over the last eight spots on the final roster. Nolan argues this cuts into his authority and ability to succeed. By 2 a.m., the two fix their differences. "I found out right then he was serious about wanting this to work," says Nolan.

Fixing broken class: from hiring a coach to selecting a franchise quarterback, through a videotape scandal and the tragic loss of a player, this is the inside story of the 49ers' restoration

Sporting News, The, Sept 23, 2005 by Paul Attner

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