Shouldn’t the 49ers change the name if they move?

November 10, 2006

So the San Francisco 49ers are moving from the City by the Bay to the city by the south Bay, Santa Clara. Can’t say that I’m too surprised, they’ve been struggling for maybe a decade if not more to get a new stadium deal put together.

San Francisco is a very difficult place to get any kind of big development deal put together. One factor of course is the high cost of any real estate near the city. On top of that there’s the left-leaning politics of the City Hall types from whom you must secure the necessary permits. All of that combines to make it a difficult environment for any deal but especially mega-deals like a stadium. It still surprises me that the Giants ever managed to get their new park built.

So the move to Santa Clara makes sense, and I’m sure they’ll be able to come up with a grand new stadium in the south Bay Area. But I don’t think they should retain the “San Francisco 49ers” name. With the new park that far away the crowd in the stadium will not have a lot of people actually from San Francisco. Most of the season ticket holders will be from the South Bay instead of SF.

At the very least then, they should remove “San Francisco” from the name. Ideally I think they should get an entirely new name, dump both “San Francisco” and “49ers”. It’s a whole new town so they should get a new name. Let the venerable 49ers brand stay put in San Francisco, even if the team behind it is moving over 30 miles south.