It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge the loss of former San Francisco 49er and Stanford University Head Coach Bill Walsh. Walsh, who passed away after a long bout with leukemia today, came to the Niners in 1979 and within three years he and his staff and his vaunted West Coast Offensive strategies brought the 49ers out of the abyss of prior several bad seasons in the late 1970's to their first Super Bowl appearence.
The young team beat the Cincinnati Bengals, 26-20. Two more Super Bowls followed, with a rash of playoff successes in between. The year after Walsh retired, 1989, the Niners won their fourth Superbowl in four tries. They became the NFL's Team of the 1980's. No other Bay Area profesional sports team has ever had such success,and he gave fans like me the first heady feeling of rooting for a local team that took on all and won it all. We should remember the players: Joe Montana, Ronnie Lott, Jerry Rice, Roger Craig, Russ Francis, Dwight Clark, Mike Wilson, Freddie Solomon et al, who made the plays work on the field, often flawlessly. But Walsh was the general and it was his plans they took to victory after victory.
The Niners were a true dynasty, and its all the more ironic that Walsh has died when it looks like the 2007 team is headed for potential glory again. With new acquisitions and more money for signing key players, The Sporting News and other publications have picked the Red and Gold to win the NFC West for the first time this decade.
Ray Ratto of the SF Chronicle summed up Walsh's contributions in a tribute. This is part of what he wrote:
"His acme was the 49ers years, when his creativity and pragmatism meshed with Eddie DeBartolo's no-check-left-unwritten approach to make the 49ers first relevant and then honored as one of the Teams Of The Decade, like the Bears of the '40s, the Browns of the '50s, the Packers of the '60s, the Steelers of the '70s, and then the Cowboys of the '90s. He filled a room, and a full chapter of a game's history, and there really isn't much more a football man can do."
Amen to that. Thank you Mr. Walsh.
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