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The folks at Pro Football Talk have figured out one way to keep football discussion going, even in the slow times. They have developed a series of articles looking at each NFL team's potential Mt. Rushmore. Today, they reached the San Francisco 49ers, and as they put it, 49ers Mt. Rushmore probably needs a bigger mountain!
It's a quiet day, so I thought I'd piggy-back on their idea. They are currently accepting nominations, after which they will present a list of 8-12 finalists. In reality, I think you could make a couple versions of Mt. Rushmore for the 49ers. Conceivably you could go with one for players and one for non-players.
That being said, Mt. Rushmore has four spots, so what four would you dare to include on a single 49ers Mt. Rushmore?
I asked the question on Twitter, and the most frequent foursome was Eddie DeBartolo, Bill Walsh, Joe Montana and Jerry Rice. There is nothing wrong with that foursome given how important they all were to the 49ers becoming the team of '80s.
However, is that really giving us a full read on 49ers history? In the PFT comments, some folks dropped in some great historical names, including Leo Nomellini, Hugh McElhenny and Joe Perry. Ronnie Lott got love as the face of those '80s defenses. Bob St. Clair deserves some love. And of course, Steve Young was a halfway decent quarterback for the 49ers.
But even beyond that, what about Tony Morabito? He was the face of the original ownership group that brought football to San Francisco. Maybe someone else eventually creates the team, but doesn't the founder of the team deserve a shout-out on the Mt. Rushmore?
I threw out a Mt. Rushmore of Morabito, DeBartolo, Walsh and Montana, but that very well could be too non-football heavy. I know most think Jerry Rice belongs on it, but really you could make arguments for a host of guys as being realistic options for it. Other teams will have discussions about players and non-football people just to have those discussions. For the 49ers, they are legitimately lengthy discussions.
Who are your four, and why?