Category: San Fransisco 49ers (Page 1 of 2)

Happy 50th Birthday, Steve Young!

11 October, 2011 / Kat

It’s the 50th birthday of my favorite NFL quarterback of all time, former San Francisco 49er Steve Young. (Or as my husband likes to refer to him, “Joe Montana’s Backup.” But when he does that, he gets the silent treatment for a good 20 minutes following.)

Young paved the way for me understanding and enjoying the game of football beyond my home region Buffalo Bills. Watching him helped teenage me understand football beyond the no-huddle offense and stoic passing quarterbacks like I was used to watching with Jim Kelly and Frank Reich. I was too young for my father’s favorite quarterback ever, Fran Tarkington, so my dad used Young as an example of what I had missed in the 1970s. Plus, my dad was naturally obsessed with any NFL player who shared his first name (Steve). That meant that my family loved Steve Tasker, Steve Wallace, Steve Bono, and Steve DeBerg along side Young. If you were a Steve, you were a football player worth watching.

But Young also paved the way for many of the ways we look at quarterbacks beyond the playing field today. While quarterbacks had always had some endorsement deals and occasionally made poor attempts at humor on Saturday Night Live and variety shows, Young took the idea of “quarterback as superstar” to a whole new level. He was one of the most commercially viable quarterbacks of all time, paving the way for what we see the Manning brothers and Tom Brady endorsing today. In 1994-95, he became one of the first celebrities featured in a “Got Milk” ad, shilled for Powerade and the then-brand-new PowerBar, and predated Brady as a Visa spokesperson, taking wide receiver Jerry Rice out to a fancy dinner. (Brady did a similar ad a decade later featuring his offensive linemen.) Young also became the king of the television cameo – he did gigs on several TV shows, including the original Beverly Hills, 90210 (every 1990s teenagers favorite show.) Even today, Young is has more national endorsements than some active quarterbacks. Young and his Dallas Cowboys counterpart Troy Aikman set the stage for how a quarterback could be used off the field, and in many respects, also carved out the niche of “quarterback as celebrity.” Quarterbacks were more than just football players – they could be well spoken, be good looking and have lives outside of football.

Steve Young wasn’t the best quarterback of all time, but he was a hell of a quarterback regardless. He was mobile, he read the field and distributed the ball well, and he was a great leader of his offense. That and his off the field presence made him a significant part of NFL history.

And if it hadn’t been for tweenage and teenage me becoming obsessed with him like my friends had with Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I might not be writing about sports today. They had their Tiger Beat posters of the Home Improvement star, and I had my Sports Illustrated covers of Young. So happy half century, Mr. Young.

(If anyone can find his famous “self-catch,” let me know. I wanted to put it in this post, but can’t find it.)

Steve Young and his famous 1988 run against Minnesota

Steve Young and Super Bowl XXIX

Steve Young and Jerry Rice Get Down With Their Bad Selves

30 May, 2011 / Kat

I may be super behind the times on this video, but forgive me. I finally saw Steve Young and Jerry Rice’s Van Heusen commercial for JCPenney this Memorial Day. This ad features Young as a professor teaching a class about men’s fashion, and using Rice as the example of what to wear.

The commercial is only epic if you’re a fan of the two (like I am.) For the rest of America, it’s about as relevant as having Full House’s Danny Tanner hawk cleaning products. Appropriate casting…for 1995. Heck, I bet half the people who see this commercial have no idea who they are, yet alone that they were one of the best QB-WR combinations in NFL history.

That aside, what is truly epic is the behind the scenes video. In this video shot by KGO-TV in San Francisco in December, Young and Rice get funky. Yes. Let us watch them get down with their bad selves. Jump to the :45 second mark in this video and see the two try to do some type of dance. Gosh darn it, is it terribly awkward.

This is the stuff popular animated GIFs are made of. Now, if only I knew how to make one.

The Eye Twitch Cure: Old USFL Footage

16 May, 2011 / Kat

For the last week, I have suffered from the world’s worst eye twitch. No, everyone I encounter everyday, I’m not winking (or flirting) with you; my right eye just won’t stop spazzing. Don’t worry – I’ve found the cure.

I’ve been searching high and low for Small Potatoes: Who Killed The USFL?, the ESPN 30 by 30 documentary about the 1980s pro football league. Every time I attempted to DVR it, something (i.e. my husband’s settings to record every Star Trek series episode known to man) would sabotage it. Flipping through my OnDemand menu Monday night, I realized that it was available – and expires Wednesday! I dropped everything and immediately started watching – all of my Commencement work would have to wait.

Happy Sweet Sixteen, Super Bowl XXIX

29 January, 2011 / Kat

Scanning through Twitter this morning, I saw Sports Illustrated writer Peter King reminiscing about Super Bowl XXIX – aka, my most favorite Super Bowl of all time. After four straight years of seeing my favorite AFC and hometown team, the Buffalo Bills, lose the Super Bowl, it was wonderful to see a Super Bowl where my favorite NFC team, the San Francisco 49ers, totally dominated. I had just turned thirteen, as awkward as a blue-collar teenage girl could be, and was struggling though a difficult time with my family. My baby brother was sickly, my dad was about to lose his job, my grandfather was sick, our car broke down and we couldn’t replace it, and I was going to have to drop out of dance classes. Pile that all on to turning thirteen, and of course I was looking for escapism anywhere I could find it.

As I wrote in 2009, that Super Bowl also meant a lot to me because reading the Sports Illustrated covering that game inspired me to want to be a sportswriter. If you doubt how much that one issue impacted me, I present to you a photo taken this morning of the ragged original copy that has moved with me to college, to Boston and grad school and now to my place in the ‘burbs. It may be torn, it may be worth absolutely nothing – but to me, it’s worth everything.

There are days where I wonder why I down multiple cups of coffee a day and sit up all hours of the evening to write for anyone and everyone who asks, despite working a demanding full-time job. All I have to do is break this out and flip through a few pages. If I can chronicle some event as well as King and Rich Telander did in this issue, and inspire some awkward thirteen year old by doing so, then all the late nights will all be worth it.

—–

Surprisingly, I’ve only written two blog posts over the years on Super Bowl XXIX. Here they are:

Fourteen Years Later, I Experience My Super Bowl XXIX

On Excitement and Nervousness

If you want to see some of the other newspaper clippings thirteen year old me saved from that Super Bowl, I took pictures and posted them on Flickr. It’s from back when there were two newspapers (Democrat and Chronicle and Times Union) in Rochester, NY. Snapping shots of these this morning made me appreciate newspapers the tactile quality. Saving printed articles from online isn’t the same as trotting out my folder of newspaper clippings.

Mr. Young, I Have a Problem With Your Hair.

25 November, 2008 / Kat

Dear Mr. Young:

You have been the object of my squee since I was old enough to have a celebrity mega crush. Even though I am now older, engaged, and have moved on to other objects of squee like Gabe Kapler and Jason Bay, you will always be my number one.

I try to catch your commentary on Monday Night Football every Monday. (I must say, Emmitt Smith makes you sound even more eloquent than you already are.) Although I had to work late on Monday, I was able to catch your post-game analysis after the Packers-Saints game. While watching, I had one overwhelming question:

What happened to your hair?

Did you dye it? It looked much lighter. Is your hair negatively reacting to the New Orleans weather? If so, I can point you in the direction of some excellent anti-frizz products. (Then again, so could your ex-model wife.) Are you so busy with your multiple children that you didn’t have time to comb it? If so, that is completely excusable – you have like five now, and not everyone can look as good as Kate Gossalin when running after their multiple young children.

I feel bad for you, and I feel even worse for pointing out in a public forum. However, I just want you to know that I’ll still be a fan, through good hair and bad, through ESPN moving you off Sunday NFL Countdown because they no longer wanted commentators with an IQ higher than 80 and your Samsung HD television advertisements where you are inexplicably wearing shabby flip-flops.

Best wishes,

Sports Girl Kat

Your #10 fan since 1992

*************

I am off to see the Boston University Terriers take on the Crusaders of the College of the Holy Cross. The Terriers have played very well against non-conference opponents this season – they are undefeated against them – but we know what we’re pretending didn’t happen last weekend. Let’s hope this evening ends well.