I was reading this article in the San Francisco Sentinel about the 49ers owner and president Jed York and realized that this man is pretty much the opposite of Dan Snyder, owner of my favorite team the Washington Redskins. Lets highlight the differences shall we?

1) York thinks the 2 most important things about the franchise are the players and the fans. Snyder on the other hand takes all of his fans for granted and nickle and dimes them for every last cent so that he can dump players that he used to like, but now doesnt for new players that he will overpay and love for a couple years, then unceremoniously dump like so many before them.

2) York has a general manager, Snyder has Vinnie Cerrato.

3) York says inspirational things like this:

“I am here by six every morning and stay until late at night,” he states, “because it’s not my team. It’s not my family’s team. It’s our fans’ team. Because if they are not supporting us, if they don’t believe in what we are doing, then our team doesn’t exist.”

Meanwhile Dan Snyder wont even talk to the media so we really dont have to many quotes from him, but i am thinking he works quite hard reading FootballGuys.com and finding out which fantasy star is in a contract year so he can acquire them for his real life roto-league. Its either that or he just uses the Madden Rankings as his guide. In either case, its not the fan’s team…its DAN’s TEAM. Proof in point, he sells tickets to scalpers before the fans (denying knowledge of doing so) and sues grandmothers into bankruptcy who cannot afford to purchase tickets anymore. It’s all about the fans, right? Don’t even get me started on the parking and tailgating garbage…

4) Jed took 4 years prior assuming his current position to learn the ins and out of his organization, providing him with a base of knowledge about being around a professional football team that is only acquired by being a part of it:

He came onboard as special projects manager, where his duties gave him a new perspective about what it takes to make a stadium work. “I literally started down in the equipment room, learning how to sew jerseys, washing and folding clothes, putting them back in the lockers-things like that,” he recalls. “I was working in the training room, figuring out how to tie ice bags. I got a chance to work with really everybody.”

The experience allowed him to build a base of contemporaries throughout the stadium. Walking through the halls of the team’s practice facility with Jed is like touring a college campus with a cool kid; he high-fives with trainers, chats with the janitorial staff, and talks smack with the players-many of whom are older than he is.

Danny bought the team with no football experience, in any capacity, at any level…and immediately starting making moves that have forever damaged the team, all while ruling the team with an iron fist clenched so tight, only the people he pays the most ever get to chill with the Danny.

So, in a nutshell, Jed York is the second coming of Jesus Christ, while Dan Snyder might as well be Satan incarnate…and yet, i still love the Redskins. Thankfully one can root for the players, coaches, uniform and history without having to cheer for the front office.

From San Francisco Sentinel

It appears awesomeness is not enough to make it in the world of finance. HRJ Capital, an investment firm started by Harris Barton, Ronnie Lott and Joe Montana (EDIT:Apparently Joe Montana left the company in 2005) (HRJ get it) all formerly of the San Francisco 49ers, is about to get taken over. HRJ apparently owes Silicon Valley Bank a staggering 69 million dollars. Sixty-nine million dollars. I mean, who would’ve thought 3 ex athletes would have no idea what they were doing in the world of private equity and finance? Don’t get mad at me, even actual financial analysts say that what they were doing was pretty dumb.

In the financial equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, HRJ apparently doomed itself by using the firm as collateral on a bridge loan as it was attempting to raise $250 million. It was able to raise only about half that amount — between $110 million and $130 million — yet it had committed the entire $250 million for investments, according to a report from Thomson Reuters.

“Yes, that’s just as dumb as it sounds,” wrote Dan Primack, the top private-equity analyst at Thomson Reuters, and founder and editor of the www.pehub.com Web site.

“It’s very hard to kill off a PE firm,” he said. “The significance here to me is that one is actually dying. This is an exceptional case.”

Exceptional indeed. I wonder how some of their well regarded clients like Andre Agassi, Jerry Rice, Tim Duncan or Oscar de la Hoya feel about it? I don’t care how tough Ronnie Lott or Harris Barton were in their prime, I wouldn’t want to be the one to tell Oscar de la Hoya that you just lost a few million of his dollars. Ouch.

From Santa Cruz Sentinal

Mike Martz wasted no time in throwing the Detroit Lions under the bus.

“In Detroit we were not a good football team,” said Mike Martz, who joined San Francisco after he was fired as the Lions’ offensive coordinator. “We were last in the NFL on defense and when you have to throw the football to win, that’s not a good thing. We weren’t good enough on the offensive line to protect him and throw the ball like we did. When I was with the Rams, we were. The number of hits on the quarterback when I was with the Rams near the end of my time there was about the middle of the pack. In the early goings, it was actually very low and we were ranked near the best in the league.”

Martz made the comment to 49ers fans at a “chalk talk” session. He is right about the Lions not being a good team. We hate to break it to him but the Niners aren’t very good either. However, they don’t have Matt Millen or an assistant that likes to get naked and drunk drive to the drive-thru. That’s like being spotted 2-3 games.

The Old Rich People are back and they come out firing with a scathing review of the state of the respective NFC & AFC Wests, in the form of a NFL commissioner’s statement being read at a press conference. Funny stuff as always.