49ers should have let T.O. go
Scott Ostler
Monday, March 8, 2004
Chicken poop.
That's what Your San Francisco 49ers have become.
They finally get rid of their weapon of mass disruption, Terrell Owens, and that allows them to settle back onto the Super Bowl track, right?
Maybe not.
Being a great team and a great organization are roles into which you expand, and the 49ers are going in a different direction -- shrinking. In creativity and in spirit.
Last week, they blew a chance to turn the corner and start acting like the big-leaguers, innovators and progressive thinkers they were for a decade.
They blew it twice with the Terrell Owens Adventure (soon to be a ride at Disneyland).
First, when T.O. and his agent missed the contract-voiding deadline, the 49ers should have given Owens his outright release anyway.
That sounds crazy, but bear with me. I am sure that no other team in the NFL, or any other sport, would have been this generous, but the 49ers got famous for thinking outside the box, not scrunching up inside it.
It would have been an enormous bargain for the 49ers, the cheapest karma purchase in the history of sports. And Lord, could this team use some karma.
Cost to 49ers to release T.O. would be the second-round draft pick they got in trade. Advantage to Owens: about $10 million in bonus money.
The $10 mil bonus would have been subtracted from the coffers of a rival team. And had the 49ers stipulated in setting him free that Owens must sign with an NFC team, the 49ers would have been shorting one of their conference foes $10 million.
I understand the 49ers' POV: They watched Owens deteriorate into, if not a cancer on the team, at least a chronic case of athlete's foot-in-the-mouth.
Using his superstar pulpit, Owens bullied, berated and belittled his coaches and teammates. This isn't about Sharpies, it is about publicly ridiculing your comrades-in-arms and then not performing to your own standards.
So naturally Terry Donahue, Dr. York and the gang had to be whooping with laughter when the clock struck midnight and T.O.'s free-agent gravy train turned into a pumpkin.
When the 49ers, suddenly on top of this dog pile (oh, the metaphors!), exercised their right to keep Owens under his old contract, and then trade him, what they were doing essentially was fining him about $10 million and denying him the right to choose his next team.
Who gets fined $10 million? The Enron dudes don't get that kind of hit. The corporate thieves and the atmosphere polluters and the suits who cheat us out of our retirement money, they don't get fined $10 million.
In return for holding T.O. captive, the 49ers got a second-round draft choice. Not to be sneezed at, but right now, the 49ers don't have the money to sign a 34th-round draft choice.
Releasing Owens would have paid instant-karma dividends in the form of a statement to football: We, the 49ers, are not a vindictive and small-minded team. We take care of our players, even the strange ones. We are a first-rate organization.
What do you suppose is the league-wide perception of the 49ers? Without going into detail, we all realize that San Francisco is no longer the Ultimate Destination for football players, coaches and executives.
This is a team that made its front-office people bunk two-to-a-room on the road to save money. Not many top people in football dream of working for such an outfit. We're offering you a job. Do you have a sleeping bag?
I said the 49ers blew it twice. No. 2: undermining the deal Owens arranged with the Eagles. Why go that extra mile to screw the guy? The 49ers tell Owens to deal with another team, and when he does, the 49ers have themselves another falling-on-the-floor laugh in their war room as they trade him to the Ravens.
The 49ers say the Eagles' offer was low. They say they wanted to trade the dangerous Owens outside their conference, but why? It should be the other way around. If Owens' liabilities now outweigh his contributions, trade him within the NFC and weaken a conference foe.
Or, if T.O. is a dangerous game-breaker whose downside is that he invents funny tricks that annoy old and conservative people, and he insults teammates on his Web site, keep him and deal with him. With no Pro Bowl quarterback on the team, it would be helpful to have someone who can catch a football.
Look at the 49ers: Are they better off now than they were a week ago? Hope that second-rounder is a doozy.
E-mail Scott Ostler at sostler@sfchronicle.com.
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