There’s an old axiom in sports about how management should handle a team’s personnel and, while it doesn’t always apply in every case, it’s pretty near a universal truth.
Goes like this: Don’t get rid of somebody until you have someone better to replace him.
To put it another way, it’s kind of like don’t tear down the walls of your house until you have a plan to rebuild them. Or, in the case we are about to discuss, don’t go tearing your team apart without a better plan to put it back together.
Yet, you see, a few weeks from the end of the season, there is mounting reason to believe that the San Francisco 49ers are going to ignore that and part ways with the coach, Jim Harbaugh, who brought the franchise back to relevance after nearly a decade of wandering in the NFL’s wilderness.
Only one word describes that potential move — idiotic — and I say that knowing full well that Harbaugh can be a difficult employee.
The real problem in San Francisco appears not to be Harbaugh, but the ownership, represented by Jed York, the team’s 30-something CEO.
Look, Harbaugh and general manager Trent Baalke are apparently not BFFs. By some accounts, they barely look at each other, let alone talk. So what? The issue should be how they work together, not how they play together, and, since the partnership began before the 2011 season, the 49ers have reached three consecutive NFC championship games and one Super Bowl.
If they don’t care for each other, so what? It’s ownership’s job — in this case, the young York — to call them into a room, sit down them, and figuratively bash their heads together to explain they are going to continue to work together. That’s management’s job.
But the problem is that York seems to have grown tired of Harbaugh, too, if that immature tweet a week ago — “This performance wasn’t acceptable. I apologize for that.” — is any indication.
Here, perhaps, York ought to consult his uncle, former 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo. He frequently got disgusted with the late Bill Walsh, the Hall of Fame coach who won him three Super Bowls and built a fourth winner, but the problem never lasted more than overnight and it was always handled privately.
There were times when Walsh thought he had been fired and wondered whether to come to work the next day, but things always worked out. Those shiny trophies in the 49ers’ building are proof they worked out.
There also are plenty of examples of coaches and general managers either brought together by their own choices or by happenstance who did not get along famously.
I’ll wager there is nothing in either Harbaugh’s or Baalke’s contract that they have to like each other. Back in the ’80s, George Young, who hired Bill Parcells, got sick to his stomach of Parcells. Yet the combination produced two Super Bowl champions for the New York Giants and a succession plan that resulted in two more titles.
And, as for getting rid of somebody — in this case a coach, but it applies equally to players — without someone better to replace him, does anyone think the Oakland Raiders might have been better off not to jettison Jon Gruden when they did because he was stealing too much of Al Davis’ spotlight? Don’t all raise your hands at once.
Yes, Harbaugh can be demanding both in terms of what he wants in the way of players and what he wants in the way of money and maybe he even carps about the pre-game meals or the office coffee. Big deal.
Let’s get a couple things straight here. First, the money part. What’s the problem? Another million, two million, whatever? That’s essentially pocket change to an NFL franchise.
So his personality is grating?
How did the 49ers like the personalities of Dennis Erickson or Mike Nolan or Mike Singletary during all those losing years before they hired Harbaugh? Sure, they can find plenty of coaches who would be easier to get along with than Harbaugh. No problem. But can they find a coach who would be better than him? Kind of doubt it.
But it sure seems like they are willing to try. Good luck with that.
Ira Miller is an award-winning sportswriter who has covered the National Football League for more than three decades and is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Selection Committee. He is a national columnist for The Sports Xchange.