The 49ers 1947 press guide cover depicts the team's original logo of a miner rowdily shooting a pair of pistols. The club's first logo was inspired by design found on the side of railway freight cars.(Source: 49ers.com )
Showing posts with label San Francisco 49ers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco 49ers. Show all posts
Friday, March 6, 2009
San Francisco 49ers Original Logo
Perhaps a tad politically incorrect today:
The 49ers 1947 press guide cover depicts the team's original logo of a miner rowdily shooting a pair of pistols. The club's first logo was inspired by design found on the side of railway freight cars.
(Source: 49ers.com )
The 49ers 1947 press guide cover depicts the team's original logo of a miner rowdily shooting a pair of pistols. The club's first logo was inspired by design found on the side of railway freight cars.(Source: 49ers.com )
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Great America owner says 'no' to Niners stadium
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/09/BA9KSNDN3.DTL&tsp=1
Great America owner says 'no' to Niners stadium in Santa Clara
Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
(10-09) SANTA CLARA - If the San Francisco 49ers want to move to Santa Clara, they may have to buy the Great America amusement park as well.
Cedar Fair Corp., which operates Great America - and whose main parking lot the Niners have been eyeing for their dream stadium - has told team officials that they oppose the $853 million project, the 49ers said today.
The company said that once before, then backed off its opposition. This time, however, it's official.
Cedar Fair is preparing to issue a statement Wednesday saying it has concluded, after months of study, that the 49ers' plan to build a 68,000-seat stadium east of Highway 101 won't work for Great America because of the loss of parking, traffic disruptions and the overall negative impact on theme park customers.
Officials in Santa Clara, which collects $5.3 million a year in revenue from Great America, say they consider Cedar Fair's support of the stadium essential for the deal to go forward. The company's plan to announce its opposition came as news to City Hall, where officials said Cedar Fair was continuing to negotiate with Santa Clara as late as today.
"Cedar Fair would need to cooperate with the proposal," Assistant City Manager Carol McCarthy said. "The land is leased to them."
The question is whether Cedar Fair's latest pronouncement is meant as a deal killer, or just the start of intensive negotiations to force the 49ers to buy the amusement park, whose assessed value last year was $114 million.
Cedar Fair wasn't doing much today to clear up the question - company representatives declined to elaborate in advance of Wednesday's announcement.
Team spokeswoman Lisa Lang noted that Cedar Fair has been "flip-flopping" on the stadium - first backing the idea, then saying it was against it, then taking a neutral stance before going negative again - and that the company's real goal may be to sell Great America.
In fact, Lang said, company officials broached the subject with the Niners during recent negotiations. Team officials believe that by announcing its opposition to the stadium deal, Cedar Fair may be looking to drive a harder bargain.
The 49ers, desperate to escape Candlestick Point by the 2012 season, aren't ruling out a Great America purchase.
"It's not how we approached this project originally, but if it's something we need to consider to move this project forward, we will consider it," Lang said.
Lang said the team is also willing to consider other options - including moving the stadium to a 17-acre parking lot just east of the current proposed site. Great America uses that lot for overflow parking.
That plan, however, is less attractive to the Niners because the stadium and its parking lot would be separated, forcing fans to walk farther to get to their seats.
"We don't feel it creates as much of an entertainment district," Lang said.
Bottom line, Lang says: "There are a number of site configurations (Cedar Fair) could look at if they are serious about wanting to go forward with the project."
But she said the company has been sending "litigators" rather than planners to recent meetings.
"From our perspective, it's just flip-flopping noise we will continue to hear as we negotiate with them, and you have to recognize that for what it is," Lang said.
Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Phil can be seen on CBS-5 morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call them at (415) 777-8815 or drop them an e-mail at matierandross@sfchronicle.com.
Great America owner says 'no' to Niners stadium in Santa Clara
Phillip Matier, Andrew Ross
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
(10-09) SANTA CLARA - If the San Francisco 49ers want to move to Santa Clara, they may have to buy the Great America amusement park as well.
Cedar Fair Corp., which operates Great America - and whose main parking lot the Niners have been eyeing for their dream stadium - has told team officials that they oppose the $853 million project, the 49ers said today.
The company said that once before, then backed off its opposition. This time, however, it's official.
Cedar Fair is preparing to issue a statement Wednesday saying it has concluded, after months of study, that the 49ers' plan to build a 68,000-seat stadium east of Highway 101 won't work for Great America because of the loss of parking, traffic disruptions and the overall negative impact on theme park customers.
Officials in Santa Clara, which collects $5.3 million a year in revenue from Great America, say they consider Cedar Fair's support of the stadium essential for the deal to go forward. The company's plan to announce its opposition came as news to City Hall, where officials said Cedar Fair was continuing to negotiate with Santa Clara as late as today.
"Cedar Fair would need to cooperate with the proposal," Assistant City Manager Carol McCarthy said. "The land is leased to them."
The question is whether Cedar Fair's latest pronouncement is meant as a deal killer, or just the start of intensive negotiations to force the 49ers to buy the amusement park, whose assessed value last year was $114 million.
Cedar Fair wasn't doing much today to clear up the question - company representatives declined to elaborate in advance of Wednesday's announcement.
Team spokeswoman Lisa Lang noted that Cedar Fair has been "flip-flopping" on the stadium - first backing the idea, then saying it was against it, then taking a neutral stance before going negative again - and that the company's real goal may be to sell Great America.
In fact, Lang said, company officials broached the subject with the Niners during recent negotiations. Team officials believe that by announcing its opposition to the stadium deal, Cedar Fair may be looking to drive a harder bargain.
The 49ers, desperate to escape Candlestick Point by the 2012 season, aren't ruling out a Great America purchase.
"It's not how we approached this project originally, but if it's something we need to consider to move this project forward, we will consider it," Lang said.
Lang said the team is also willing to consider other options - including moving the stadium to a 17-acre parking lot just east of the current proposed site. Great America uses that lot for overflow parking.
That plan, however, is less attractive to the Niners because the stadium and its parking lot would be separated, forcing fans to walk farther to get to their seats.
"We don't feel it creates as much of an entertainment district," Lang said.
Bottom line, Lang says: "There are a number of site configurations (Cedar Fair) could look at if they are serious about wanting to go forward with the project."
But she said the company has been sending "litigators" rather than planners to recent meetings.
"From our perspective, it's just flip-flopping noise we will continue to hear as we negotiate with them, and you have to recognize that for what it is," Lang said.
Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Phil can be seen on CBS-5 morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call them at (415) 777-8815 or drop them an e-mail at matierandross@sfchronicle.com.
Monday, August 6, 2007
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
Robalini's Note: Growing up in the Bay Area in Cupertino, California, I was blessed to have the home team to root for none other than the San Francisco 49ers, who from 1981-1998 had the greatest sustained run in NFL history. And with all due respect to Joe Montana (as well as Jerry Rice, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott and others) it was Bill Walsh, the coaching genius behind the Niners, who made the team what it was, and helped change the game of football with his West Coast Offense more than anyone else over the last thirty years. For this, he gets a special Konformist salute...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/sports/football/31walsh.html
July 31, 2007
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Bill Walsh, who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and became one of professional football’s most influential figures, devising passing strategies that were emulated long after the decline of his dynasty, died yesterday at his home in Woodside, Calif. He was 75.
The cause was leukemia, the 49ers said. Walsh disclosed last November that he was being treated for leukemia, which had been diagnosed two years earlier.
Except for high school coaching, Walsh did not become a head coach until Stanford hired him when he was 45. And he spent 11 seasons as an assistant in the N.F.L.
But his long apprenticeship — too long, the way he saw it — served him well. He honed his creativity and became known as “the genius,” a silver-haired, almost professorial presence orchestrating the 49ers’ brilliant offenses as the head coach from 1979 to 1988.
Walsh’s 49ers teams won Super Bowl titles in 1982, 1985 (after losing only one game all season) and 1989. They captured six National Football Conference West championships.
Walsh had a regular-season record of 92-59-1 with the 49ers, serving as offensive coordinator in addition to head coach and, at varying times, as the general manager and the club president. His lineups featured the future Hall of Famers Joe Montana at quarterback and Ronnie Lott at defensive back and the league’s career receiving leader, Jerry Rice. Walsh was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
Walsh’s playbooks bulged, focusing on a passing game that became known as the West Coast offense. It featured mostly short or medium-range passes designed to work against all types of defenses, and it included trick plays. His was a horizontal offense, in contrast to the vertical strategy that depended on long — and low percentage — passes downfield. Walsh’s offense became the aerial equivalent of a ball-control strategy previously associated with a running game.
“When we go over the game plan during the week, it doesn’t look like it will work,” Montana told Dave Anderson of The New York Times shortly after the 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl for the first time. “But when we get into the game and use it, it seems that the plan always works.”
Walsh’s pass patterns generally succeeded in getting at least one receiver open and sometimes as many as three.
He cited several factors for his extraordinary success.
“I think we’re willing to settle for a little less yardage on passes than some teams are,” he said after the first Super Bowl triumph. “Two, our willingness to throw to the second and third receivers. And three, to look downfield for the great individual play.”
Walsh proved influential on matters beyond his passing game. He was an early advocate of minority hiring for coaching positions, many of his assistants became head coaches, and his procedures in organizing a team and developing practice routines were copied.
William Ernest Walsh, a native of Los Angeles, played wide receiver and boxed at San Jose State. After coaching in high school, he became an assistant at the University of California and at Stanford, then embarked on his pro career in 1966 as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
He moved to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 as an assistant to the head coach and owner, Paul Brown, and developed Ken Anderson into an outstanding quarterback. When Brown retired and passed him over for the head-coaching spot in 1976, in favor of the offensive line coach Bill Johnson, Walsh joined the San Diego Chargers as the offensive coordinator and tutored quarterback Dan Fouts.
Walsh returned to the college ranks as Stanford’s coach in 1977 and 1978, taking the team to bowl games each season and developing Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils into star passers.
When Walsh became the 49ers’ coach in 1979, he took over a team that had gone 2-14 the previous season.
The 49ers were 2-14 again in Walsh’s first year, but he gradually built a championship squad.
A signature play came in the 1982 National Football Conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, when Montana rolled out and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Dwight Clark at the back of the end zone in the final minute.
Shortly after the 49ers won the 1989 Super Bowl, Walsh stepped down as the coach and became the team’s executive vice president for football operations. But in July ’89, he left to become a football broadcaster for NBC. His successor, George Seifert, who had been the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, went on to win two Super Bowls with San Francisco.
Walsh had a second tenure as Stanford’s coach, from 1992 to 1994. He returned to the 49ers as the vice president and general manager from 1999 to 2001, was later a consultant to the team and served as Stanford’s interim athletic director in 2005-6.
He is survived by his wife, Geri; a son, Craig of Redwood City, Calif; a daughter, Elizabeth of San Francisco; a sister, Maureen of Mission Viejo, Calif; and two grandchildren.
Walsh regarded football as something beyond a test of physical will.
“If I have any talent, it’s in the artistic end of football,” he once told Lowell Cohn of The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/sports/football/31walsh.html
July 31, 2007
Bill Walsh, Former 49ers Coach, Dies at 75
By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN
Bill Walsh, who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and became one of professional football’s most influential figures, devising passing strategies that were emulated long after the decline of his dynasty, died yesterday at his home in Woodside, Calif. He was 75.
The cause was leukemia, the 49ers said. Walsh disclosed last November that he was being treated for leukemia, which had been diagnosed two years earlier.
Except for high school coaching, Walsh did not become a head coach until Stanford hired him when he was 45. And he spent 11 seasons as an assistant in the N.F.L.
But his long apprenticeship — too long, the way he saw it — served him well. He honed his creativity and became known as “the genius,” a silver-haired, almost professorial presence orchestrating the 49ers’ brilliant offenses as the head coach from 1979 to 1988.
Walsh’s 49ers teams won Super Bowl titles in 1982, 1985 (after losing only one game all season) and 1989. They captured six National Football Conference West championships.
Walsh had a regular-season record of 92-59-1 with the 49ers, serving as offensive coordinator in addition to head coach and, at varying times, as the general manager and the club president. His lineups featured the future Hall of Famers Joe Montana at quarterback and Ronnie Lott at defensive back and the league’s career receiving leader, Jerry Rice. Walsh was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1993.
Walsh’s playbooks bulged, focusing on a passing game that became known as the West Coast offense. It featured mostly short or medium-range passes designed to work against all types of defenses, and it included trick plays. His was a horizontal offense, in contrast to the vertical strategy that depended on long — and low percentage — passes downfield. Walsh’s offense became the aerial equivalent of a ball-control strategy previously associated with a running game.
“When we go over the game plan during the week, it doesn’t look like it will work,” Montana told Dave Anderson of The New York Times shortly after the 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals to win the Super Bowl for the first time. “But when we get into the game and use it, it seems that the plan always works.”
Walsh’s pass patterns generally succeeded in getting at least one receiver open and sometimes as many as three.
He cited several factors for his extraordinary success.
“I think we’re willing to settle for a little less yardage on passes than some teams are,” he said after the first Super Bowl triumph. “Two, our willingness to throw to the second and third receivers. And three, to look downfield for the great individual play.”
Walsh proved influential on matters beyond his passing game. He was an early advocate of minority hiring for coaching positions, many of his assistants became head coaches, and his procedures in organizing a team and developing practice routines were copied.
William Ernest Walsh, a native of Los Angeles, played wide receiver and boxed at San Jose State. After coaching in high school, he became an assistant at the University of California and at Stanford, then embarked on his pro career in 1966 as an assistant with the Oakland Raiders.
He moved to the expansion Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 as an assistant to the head coach and owner, Paul Brown, and developed Ken Anderson into an outstanding quarterback. When Brown retired and passed him over for the head-coaching spot in 1976, in favor of the offensive line coach Bill Johnson, Walsh joined the San Diego Chargers as the offensive coordinator and tutored quarterback Dan Fouts.
Walsh returned to the college ranks as Stanford’s coach in 1977 and 1978, taking the team to bowl games each season and developing Guy Benjamin and Steve Dils into star passers.
When Walsh became the 49ers’ coach in 1979, he took over a team that had gone 2-14 the previous season.
The 49ers were 2-14 again in Walsh’s first year, but he gradually built a championship squad.
A signature play came in the 1982 National Football Conference championship game against the Dallas Cowboys, when Montana rolled out and threw a 6-yard touchdown pass to Dwight Clark at the back of the end zone in the final minute.
Shortly after the 49ers won the 1989 Super Bowl, Walsh stepped down as the coach and became the team’s executive vice president for football operations. But in July ’89, he left to become a football broadcaster for NBC. His successor, George Seifert, who had been the 49ers’ defensive coordinator, went on to win two Super Bowls with San Francisco.
Walsh had a second tenure as Stanford’s coach, from 1992 to 1994. He returned to the 49ers as the vice president and general manager from 1999 to 2001, was later a consultant to the team and served as Stanford’s interim athletic director in 2005-6.
He is survived by his wife, Geri; a son, Craig of Redwood City, Calif; a daughter, Elizabeth of San Francisco; a sister, Maureen of Mission Viejo, Calif; and two grandchildren.
Walsh regarded football as something beyond a test of physical will.
“If I have any talent, it’s in the artistic end of football,” he once told Lowell Cohn of The San Francisco Chronicle.
“The variation of movement of 11 players and the orchestration of that facet of football is beautiful to me.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
