Is Jed York the Best Owner in the Bay Area?
Jed York sees himself as the one true heir of Eddie DeBartolo Jr., the former 49ers owner who won five Super Bowls and lost none.
My father, Lowell Cohn, who covered Bay Area sports from 1979 to 2017, sees someone else in the Bay Area as Eddie's heir.
LC: "Jed is not Eddie. Eddie was emotional, fierce, demanding, had the highest standards. Jed is not like that at all. But there is an Eddie in the Bay Area, and it's Warriors owner Joe Lacob. Joe Lacob was always very nice to me. I had his phone number. He was very accessible. But he is a very hard guy to work for. My guess is Bob Meyers may have had enough of him calling him up all the time, etc. But he has the highest standards and he has won four championships quickly and he just rewarded Steve Kerr with two more years on his contract, which Steve deserves. He rewarded excellence and wanted to show he hasn't lost confidence in Steve, who's doing a very good job this season given what he has to work with. So the heir to Eddie is Lacob, not Jed. If I were Jed, I'd go talk to Lacob, take him out to lunch and ask him how he runs his organization? What are his standards? What is he doing over there? I would always want to learn.
"Lacob likes to fire people -- he told me that. He told me he's not a cruel man, but when I enter a place, I size up who's there and fire a lot of people. I want to have the best. My feeling about Lacob is that he's an upstanding person -- not ethically upstanding. He stands for what he believes. I see Jed as a leaner. He leans on people. He needs support. He's not as self confident and independent as Lacob."
