SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- It was during the 1987 strike, and Steve Young recalled hearing a frustrated owner say the NFL players needed to remember their place in the football food chain.
“Sooner or later,” Young recalled the owner saying, “these players have got to realize that we’re the owners and they’re the chow.”
Eddie DeBartolo, who presided over a San Francisco 49ers dynasty that won five Super Bowl titles between the 1981 and 1994 seasons, was the anti-establishment owner, earning him selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He not only treated his players as human beings, he showered them with lavish gifts, and the players responded. Well. It represented a fundamental change in the owner-player relationship.
“Eddie completely ripped up that [chow] narrative,” said Young, the Hall of Fame quarterback and ESPN analyst. “And people may be jealous of it, might be frustrated by that, might not like it, might have felt like it was not right. But he tore it up.
“He and his players were family. To this day. Still, if you need something from Eddie, anybody that ever played for the team could call him. Call him personally and he would come to the rescue, figure out a way to help you.”
DeBartolo’s excesses were unheard of at the time, and many observers “credit” his largesse as being the impetus for the NFL instituting a salary cap, for competitive reasons.
But in 1999, the NFL slapped DeBartolo with a one-year suspension for his involvement in a Louisiana gambling scandal, and he pleaded guilty to a felony for failing to report an extortion attempt by then-Gov. Edwin Edwards.
A year later, DeBartolo was no longer running the Niners. Under his watch, the late-1990s 49ers committed various salary-cap violations, resulting in punishments for team executives including president Carmen Policy ($400,000 fine) and vice president Dwight Clark ($200,000), a $300,000 team fine, the forfeiture of a fifth-round pick in 2001 and a third-round pick in 2002.
Call it revisionist history or a revelation, but DeBartolo said he never was forced out as Niners owner.
“Truthfully,” DeBartolo, now 69, claimed during a recent conference call, “the team really wasn’t taken away from me. This has been a misnomer for many, many years. It came to a decision that had to be made, whether or not I wanted the 49ers or whether or not I wanted to take the other part of the company. And I figured at that time -- my sister Denise was involved totally, as was her family -- I decided in that meeting in Akron, Ohio, that I thought it would be best if I took the other side and my tenure with the 49ers would end then and end there.”
For 16 years, the thought was that DeBartolo had been stripped of the team.
“I don’t know if that story has ever been told,” he said. “But it really was a choice. I just figured there was more to do with my life at that time. I had succeeded and done a lot with the 49ers, and it meant the world to me.
“But I just figured, with my daughters and them getting older and all of us getting older and having grandchildren ... planning on families, it would be best for me to be a grandfather and be a good husband and dad and do what I wanted to do, maybe travel a little bit and spend more time with my family.”
Take away Jim Harbaugh’s first three seasons with the Niners (2011-13) and the team is a combined 42 games under .500 (59-101) since it moved on from Steve Mariucci following the 2002 season.
DeBartolo has become more than a cult favorite for the 49ers faithful. Since being named a candidate for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the contributor category, he has become downright mythological.
Young went so far as to suggest DeBartolo’s dealing with players changed the dynamic for collective bargaining agreements years down the road and said his former owner breaking down barriers between owner and player made players feel they were true partners.
Even if, as Young said, DeBartolo putting himself on the line this way was truly not a risky move since DeBartolo was an owner and, really, who’s going to fire an owner?
“The owners are untouchable, they’re unaccountable,” Young said. “And it’s frustrating as a player because you’re ultimately accountable &$133; you’re at risk.
“Eddie, by jumping into it, put himself at risk, in our minds. He was with us. I think he gave the image &$133; that I’m in it with you. I’m at risk as well. I thought that was masterful.”