Jed York ready to tackle 49ers' many challenges
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/01/MNJA13PPOQ.DTL
His first NFL game was in Cleveland at age 3. He sat on Jennifer Montana's lap.
"I'm still searching for a better seat," he says.
He was 7 when John Madden nearly ran him into a locker at Giants Stadium in Madden's haste to interview Jerry Rice, who had caught a last-minute, game-winning touchdown bomb from Jennifer's husband, Joe.
Fifth grade marked the first time in four years that he hadn't made a trip to the White House to celebrate a sports championship.
Jed York was one lucky kid. But he's no longer the youngster the Super Bowl 49ers used to stash in lockers. Now, at age 27, as the front man for the whole operation, he has challenges that would stymie a managerial graybeard.
He's trying to repair a franchise that broke down years ago and is still leaking oil all over the Candlestick parking lot. He recently told the head coach to hand over his whistle. While San Francisco officials are trying hard to keep the team in town, he's trying just as hard to get a stadium built in Santa Clara - and partly with public money in the midst of a global financial crisis.
As if that's not daunting enough, he's trying to do it with a fan base reared on NFL championships, an ornery herd that's convinced everything the Yorks touch turns to radioactive waste.
York has the odd title of "vice president of strategic planning/owner" of the 49ers. He has other less-defined but more expansive responsibilities with the 49ers, namely their face and their future. He doesn't make all the important decisions yet, but he will someday.
His parents, John York and Denise DeBartolo York - who have been the team's principal owners for eight years - flee from the spotlight. Not Jed.
When Mike Nolan was dumped and Mike Singletary replaced him as interim head coach, the parents were out of town, but it probably wouldn't have made any difference. It was Jed who presided over the news conference. That's the way all three Yorks want it.
He doesn't mind looking into TV lights, a willingness he traces to the scores of game trips he made with his grandfather. Edward J. DeBartolo Sr. was a construction magnate who practically invented the shopping mall and who expanded his fortune with hotels, office parks, condos, racetracks and department store chains. He purchased the 49ers in 1977 and gave them to his son, Ed Jr. The elder DeBartolo also owned the NHL Pittsburgh Penguins from 1981 to 1991. He died in 1994.
"A roomful of reporters - that's not going to bother me," York said, although in his 3 1/2 years with the organization he has rarely given interviews until recently. He may have weaknesses, but a lack of confidence is not one of them, despite the fact he's younger than 24 of the 53 players on the roster.
"People look at me and think my age is a negative," he said. "Well, when you're 6 years old and you're playing gin with your grandfather, who is one of the most successful businessmen in the country, if not the world, and some of his buddies - and you're beating them - it makes it easier for me to sit across the table from somebody. ... I never feel uncomfortable being around people."
Engaging manner
York got rid of his beard this year at the behest of his girlfriend. He has good looks, an engaging manner, almost startling maturity. His voice calls to mind Tom Cruise, minus the loopy worldview.
In an interview, he was comfortable and eager to make his points, although a 49ers media relations person sat in, raising the possibility the organization didn't think he was ready to go solo. She explained later that she wanted to be available in case there were questions she needed to follow up on. She said York's parents had nothing to do with her presence.
York said he didn't insist on it either, although he said the biggest lesson he learned from uncle and godfather Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the beloved former owner of the franchise, was: "Don't read the papers."
"I lied," DeBartolo said from his office in Tampa, Fla. "I read everything, and I probably shouldn't have."
DeBartolo succeeded in a difficult business, he said, because "I had more than my share of street sense. It's important that you get bloodied a little bit. You have to take your lumps, then go right back."
Does York have street sense?
"He's getting it," DeBartolo said. "This is something new to him."
One of York's main tasks is the effort to build a stadium in Santa Clara. He said the financial crisis hasn't stopped that. "We're looking at a ballot in either June or (next) November. Hopefully we can get the environmental process done so we can go in June."
He expressed strong support for general manager Scot McCloughan. "Scot's going to be here." Forever? "I don't know about forever, but Scot's going to be here. We just gave him a contract extension at the end of last season."
Asked how tough it has made his job that his parents have nowhere near the popularity Eddie had, he said comparisons between them and his uncle are unfair. He pointed out Denise was club president of the Penguins when they won the Stanley Cup in 1991 and is one of the few women whose name is engraved on it.
"Did they step into a difficult situation when they took over operational control of the 49ers? Yeah. It was difficult," York said. "That's why I'm here and why I'm so passionate about putting that winning tradition back."
He admitted it eats at him that the 49ers have been losers since 2003 and that they have to play in antiquated Candlestick Park.
"Somebody asked me this weekend what I do for fun," he said. "I go to work for fun. I love what I do here. But until I feel like the 49ers are where I expect them to be, it's very hard for me to let steam off and do other things."
Although he has traveled extensively to Europe and China, he said, "I can't relax if I travel right now. It would make him "sick to my stomach to not be here."
He served as best man recently at the wedding of his closest friend but couldn't really enjoy the celebration. "Every Saturday night around 9 o'clock, it clicks. I can't be out."
He tried to explain.
"It's hard for me to accept losing," he said. "It's hard for me knowing that we've got the oldest stadium in the NFL. We're trying to do things to make that stadium better, but we also know we need to move forward and solidify the 49ers' position in the Bay Area for the long-term future. Until those things happen, it's really hard for me to focus on anything but that."
Veteran sports executive Andy Dolich, who joined the team in January as chief operating officer, said York is perfectly suited to his role.
"He's grown up in this organization and in this business," Dolich said. "There's a lot to be said for that. ... He's seen the best, the worst and stuff in the middle from the day he was born. He was born a 49er."
His given name was a combination of John, for his dad, and Edward, for his grandfather. Growing up in Youngstown, Ohio, he was an A student, as were his brother, Tony, 25, who runs an Internet job search company, and his twin sisters, Mara and Jenna, 22, who work in the wine business in Napa.
He and his family visited the White House with the 49ers after their 1988 and '89 championship seasons. He went again in 1991 after the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. He remembers thinking George H.W. Bush was almost as powerful as Grandpa DeBartolo.
Jed played youth football, packing 210 pounds in eighth grade - "It wasn't a pretty 210 either." He didn't play at Cardinal Mooney High School but was student body president and captain of the baseball team.
Friends say he never flaunted his family's wealth. High school pal Brian Brooke said some mutual friends "never knew his financial background or what his connection was to the 49ers. He never acted like he had money."
Brooke, the son of a steel-mill worker, got to travel with the York family to New Orleans for a weekend. Other York chums had similar experiences. Jed mainly attended 49ers road games in the East and Midwest and lots of Penguins games in Pittsburgh, an hour's drive from Youngstown. The family rule was that you had to make sure you were in school the next day.
"I always wanted to follow in my grandfather's footsteps, whether that was in the real estate business or in the professional sports business," York said.
That, of course, meant going to Notre Dame, where his grandfather, father and uncles went. His mother attended St. Mary's, Notre Dame's sister school. John York pulled her name out of a hat for a blind date, and the rest is 49er history.
The family also has contributed millions to Notre Dame. Many of the classrooms are in DeBartolo Hall on DeBartolo Quad. Later came the Marie P. DeBartolo Center for the Performing Arts, named for Jed's grandmother. Few people on campus knew he was part of the philanthropic family.
Low-key in college
James Durkin, now a Chicago attorney, had known York for weeks on the campus when the subject came up of the 49ers' victory over Durkin's heroes, the Bears, in the bone-chilling 1989 NFC title game. York mentioned that he was at the game. "That's when it came out (that his family owned the team)," Durkin said.
That 28-3 victory in Chicago that sent the team to Super Bowl XXIII is one of Jed's favorite 49er memories. "It was 25 or 30 below, windchill," he said. "The Gatorade was freezing on the sidelines. I'll never forget that feeling, of everybody celebrating and getting ready to go on to Florida to play the Bengals."
One of his worst memories is watching on TV when Montana injured his elbow in the NFC title game in January 1991. "I'll never forget the sick feeling I had as a 10-year-old, watching the team lose and seeing Joe get hurt."
His parents insisted that before the children worked for any of the family businesses, they had to work elsewhere first. Jed joined Guggenheim Partners, a financial services firm in Manhattan. He started in the private wealth management group, then studied risk analysis in the hedge fund group and later worked on leveraged debt.
Helpful experience
The experience has come in handy with the 49ers, especially when it comes to borrowing big bucks for a new stadium during a credit crisis. The economy is "a double-edged sword" when it comes to stadium financing, he said.
"You look at some stadiums being built now (Giants-Jets, Cowboys, Yankees, Mets), I think they're continuing to do pretty well on presales, naming rights and seat licenses, but obviously the climate has changed dramatically from where we were six months ago. They're on the hook with lenders for hundreds of millions of dollars.
"We're not to that point yet. It's good that we don't have loan documents and construction costs signed, because I think you're going to see some cost deflation."
He said cost inflation previously ran 5 to 10 percent annually in the Bay Area. He thinks the credit market will start to calm down in the next six to 12 months. "We'll be in a much better position at that point to find the right financing partner," he said.
Finding the right people to manage the football operation, of course, is just as important. He had hoped to spend five years in New York before joining the 49ers. Instead, he decided in 2004 to cut short his Guggenheim stay because the team was about to dump general manager Terry Donahue and coach Dennis Erickson, and he wanted to be on board when their successors were named.
With the title "coordinator of special projects," he spent six months rotating through each department - legal, marketing, scouting, even the equipment room. He learned how to tie an ice bag while wrapping an ankle.
Fortunately, he needs only five hours of sleep. He leaves his Marina district apartment at 5:15 a.m., unless he's staying at the family's apartment in Santa Clara. He gets a workout in, then works about a 12-hour day.
"He's tougher than people may suspect," said ex-linebacker Keena Turner, the 49ers' vice president of football affairs. "What I like the most is he's competitive as hell. This is all he thinks about the entire day."
On the other hand, York's reaction to a question about the wisdom of making quarterback Alex Smith the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2005 is telling. "I'm not a football guy," he said. "It's hard for me to give a football opinion. Alex is obviously very talented. We hope we can find a way for him to stay with the organization."
So he isn't likely to micromanage the football operation. He says McCloughan will make the major football decisions, but York (and his parents) undoubtedly will have to OK them. Will Singletary be more than an interim coach? Will Mike Holmgren be pursued as a Bill Parcells-type overseer? Will feelers go out to Pete Carroll?
The committee will decide. Who holds the key vote? According to Denise York, "Nobody is God."
As unseasoned as he is, Jed is bound to make mistakes, just as Uncle Eddie did when he took over at age 30.
"There's always impetuousness in youth," Dolich said, before quickly adding, "There's a maturity in him that's beyond his years. I've worked with a lot of wild and crazy sons and daughters of ownerships, and in my eight franchises I would rank him up at the top as somebody that 'gets it.' "
Temperament like uncle's
Jed and Eddie talk about once a week. What always stood out the most about Eddie, Jed said, is "his passion and his fire. I've seen my uncle put some holes in walls. I don't know if I'm proud or not to say it, but I've done the same thing."
Eddie DeBartolo suspects his sister and her husband would have sold the team if Jed hadn't pulled the sword from the stone, because none of the other children were interested in running the club. "But that's just an opinion," DeBartolo said.
"Eddie suspects a lot of things that aren't true," Denise York said. "We would have made that decision as a family."
It's a moot point because Jed "felt so strongly about carrying on the family name, trying to right the bad information that's been put out there about us," she said.
Jed is "obsessed and rightfully so," Eddie said.
Whether he can restore the 49ers to competitiveness, if not greatness, is anybody's guess. If he can't, it won't be for a lack of energy.
"It wasn't that my uncle or my grandfather put me under their wing and said, 'This is how you run a professional sports team,' " York said. "You saw it. You saw everything click. You knew the feeling that was there and was meant to be there. That's something I've taken with me. That's really what I see myself bringing to the 49ers today - re-establishing that culture of winning."
