{"id":719323,"date":"2026-01-31T15:23:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/719323\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T15:23:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T15:23:13","slug":"49ers-news-eddie-debartolo-blunt-take-on-31-year-championship-drought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/719323\/","title":{"rendered":"49ers News: Eddie DeBartolo blunt take on 31-year championship drought"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over on the feed<\/a>, you may have seen a snippet from former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo on the team\u2019s 31-year drought to a Lombardi Trophy. When asked how frustrating it would be as an owner to go 31 years without a championship, DeBartolo said it as succinctly as possible:<\/p>\n

Obviously, this has brought many of the York\/DeBartolo comparisons back into the fold, and speculation on how much better DeBartolo would have done if he still owned the team.<\/p>\n

DeBartolo ceded control <\/a>of the team after a scandal involving the former governor of Louisiana, Edwin Edwards. After being barred from controlling the team for a year, he decided to take the other part of the company, while his sister, Denise York, took the 49ers.<\/p>\n

Eventually, her son, Jed, took over the team, and it\u2019s the 49ers as you know it today.<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s frustrating, and yes, we joke about the team being cursed\u2014or in my case, waiting for something I call \u201cThe Great Disappointment\u201d whenever the 49ers are in contention, but it\u2019s also a much different era than it was during DeBartolo\u2019s time. DeBartolo prided himself on getting personal with his players and taking care of them. That includes paying them top dollar and not having to worry about free agency or salary caps.<\/p>\n

All I\u2019m saying is that\u2019s an appropriate response from a beloved owner like Eddie DeBartolo, but it also was in an era when he could spend money on players, and free agency wasn\u2019t the thing it is today. Can you imagine all the free agency casualties the 49ers had over the last few years avoided because they didn\u2019t have to worry about hitting a limit? Could they have managed to keep all those players? Who knows. Trades were more prevalent, but there was much more time to develop players and a larger window to win as a result.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not saying DeBartolo is wrong, I\u2019m just providing context that this is a different era, and it\u2019s even harder to win when NFL teams are basically penalized for drafting well.<\/p>\n

Then again, the 49ers could just shove all the chips in like other teams do for one year and then spend a few years in mediocrity. Personally, I would rather be in contention every year and not \u201cbuy\u201d championships, but maybe that would be the new strategy.<\/p>\n

Where do you come off on DeBartolo\u2019s comments?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over on the feed, you may have seen a snippet from former San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2080],"tags":[220,7,6,1161,252,1137,2624,2623],"class_list":{"0":"post-719323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-49ers","8":"tag-49ers","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-49ers","13":"tag-san-francisco-49ers-news","14":"tag-sanfrancisco","15":"tag-sanfrancisco49ers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115990404365650787","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}