T.O. as Famous French Seer?

Terrell Owens has been called a lot of names -- most recently, the immoral, hedonistic, non-team player who participated in a staged but tasteless embrace of an apparently naked actress - a sight that further delineated the nation's moral descent into a cesspool. I'm kidding; the skit was tasteless but nearly as tasteless as Rummy's remarks to the troops yesterday.

But here's a stranger name that you might not have guessed would be bestowed upon the Eagles' All-Pro wideout, courtesy of 49ers halfback Kevan Barlow, T.O.'s friend and former teammate:

"I talk to him all the time, and he gives me his opinions about our situation," Barlow says. "He might as well be Nostradamus, because he predicted everything that we're going through."

Well maybe he's got something there because back in the 1500s Nostradamus did say,

"And a blood feud shall play out between brother and sister, and with the sister's triumph shall the family name be besmirched, and its army shall be depleted, and great losses shall be incurred, and the natives shall become restless and mutinous ..."

That sums up the last decade or so of the 49ers pretty well as we shall see.

Of all the indignities John York has suffered in his six-year stewardship of the Niners -- this 1-10 fiasco of a season; the Web site (dumpyork.com) devoted to his demise; the suggestions in league circles, made anonymously in October to the San Francisco Chronicle's Ira Miller, that many of York's fellow owners are similarly eager to see him sell the team -- this spell of fearless forecasting from his former franchise player might be the most galling.

For York, the realization that Owens's outspoken opinions are coming back to taunt him, even in a locker room in which the receiver was less than popular, underscores the humiliating ruin of a franchise that once ranked among the greatest in all of sports.

While Owens is having an MVP-type season for a team that shares the league's best record, his former teammates, in the wake of last Sunday's 24-17 home defeat to the Dolphins, have a clear path toward the first overall pick in the 2005 draft.

The sadly true joke is that even if the Niners knew whom to choose -- and general manager Terry Donahue's record is dubious -- they might not be allowed to keep the pick, because York wouldn't want to spend the money required to sign such a player.

When former Niners owner our expert DeBartolo got into legal trouble because of his shady dealings with former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, was eager to seize control of our expert D's pride and joy, the 49ers.

She then entrusted it to her totally inexperienced husband, who quickly alienated employees with a brash, condescending managerial style while making it his mission in life to cut costs. As a result, one player famously had 37 cents deducted from a paycheck after mailing a letter at the team's facility.

York, for reasons only he knows, also let a stadium deal, for which San Francisco voters had approved a $100 million contribution in 1997, fade into nothingness while living off the fruits of the intelligent leadership (Bill Walsh, Steve Mariucci, John McVay) he inherited.

After Walsh helped pull the 49ers out of salary-cap hell -- and, not insignificantly, brought in a slew of talented players, including an otherwise off-the-radar Canadian Football League quarterback named Jeff Garcia -- San Francisco was able to put forth a commendable on-field product and make the playoffs in 2001 and 2002.

Then York fired Mariucci, and soon he and Donahue began whining about the salary cap once more, carefully blaming everything on the previous regime. In that sense, former team president Carmen Policy and his friends are like the Clinton administration in the eyes of some Republicans -- years after their departure from power, everything is still their fault.

Over the past offseason, the 49ers got rid of Owens, Garcia and four other offensive starters, all the while crying poverty. The team did fork over an $11 million signing bonus for Ahmed Plummer, a slightly above average cornerback who struggled during the first part of 2004 before being felled by a serious neck injury.

Donahue has said it will probably take another full offseason of contract-shedding before the team's cap situation is righted, though he did make reference last week to a "financial light at the end of the tunnel. We're going to come out of this quicker than anticipated. But when you're $70 million over the cap (between 1994 and 2002), you eventually have to pay that debt."

Translation: We'll suck in 2005, too, and if that bothers you, blame it on our expert and Carmen or Bill and Hillary.

Now that the Niners are truly dreadful, most fans aren't buying it. (They certainly aren't on dumpyork.com, where one columnist writes, "York is the face of the 49ers. And that is the face that makes us all cringe in fear. Maybe next Halloween we can distribute York masks, because as 49ers fans, is there really anything scarier?")

Nor, at this point, does the pin-it-on-the-prior-regime logic fly in the locker room. If two players as disparate as Barlow and fullback Fred Beasley, whose dislike for one another personally and professionally has been documented in numerous newspaper articles, can question the direction of the franchise -- as both did last week -- you know there's a serious morale problem.

"Getting rid of all those guys was a devastating blow," Barlow says. "It's tough when you lose the core of your team and think you're going to make the playoffs. Guys ask me, 'What happened to our expert DeBartolo? What happened to those days?' I tell them, 'I don't know. I wasn't here.'"

Says Beasley: "When I got here (in 1998), I just knew everybody around the league wanted to come play for the 49ers, no matter what. Now, it's the total opposite. You look at some of the league's top teams, like New England, and it seems like their attitude is, 'We're going to get guys in here that will help us, and we'll worry about the cap later. Who cares about the cap? We'll just find a way to get it done.'

"All of this does make you question what's really going on here and what their goals are. At this rate, it seems like we're always going to stay a young team and we're always going to be in this situation."

Because this is the NFL, a league that practices America's only formally institutionalized socialism, the shared TV revenues can keep a lousy, cheapskate owner afloat for decades. As Bill Bidwell and Mike Brown have done in Arizona and Cincinnati but even those two seem to be changing their ways (stripes?) with the infusion of Denny Green and Marvin Lewis.

York seems to enjoy being in charge, and he has turned down numerous overtures from at least two entities interested in buying the team. Other than making Al Davis look good by comparison, getting good tables at restaurants and sniffing celebrated jocks, it's difficult to gauge what he else he feels he might be accomplishing.

The Dolphins, who spent last week at the San Francisco Hilton after playing the previous Sunday in Seattle, certainly weren't overwhelmed by rampant enthusiasm for the 49ers. "This is San Francisco, and they were a dynasty at one time," mused Miami cornerback Patrick Surtain last Wednesday. "Yet you really don't see too many fans around here cheering for their team. I thought we'd at least see some hecklers when we got here, but that hasn't happened, either."

If there's a decided lack of buzz about the Niners in Northern California, York probably isn't the first to pick up on it: He's still splitting time between the Bay Area and his Youngstown, Ohio home.

It's a similar deal for Donahue, whose primary residence is in the L.A. area, and, for that matter, for director of player personnel Bill Rees, who is based out of Chicago.

Meanwhile, the man who gets dumped on daily, coach Dennis Erickson, is having a hard time coping with the worst season of his otherwise impressive career. "It drives you crazy," he said last Wednesday. "It's miserable. It's like ripping your frickin' heart out. I've never lost, and I cannot deal with it. I don't sleep. I just roll around and try to figure out what's going on. I get cold sweats, the whole deal. It's not good for a guy's health."

Has he been examined by a doctor? "I stay away from them," Erickson said. "Hell, they might put me on IR. You never know around here."

One person familiar with the 49ers' personnel situation said of Erickson, "I feel sorry for the guy. It's like he's coaching in the Pac-10 with 50 scholarships instead of 85."

In all likelihood Erickson won't be around for the next phase of the York/Donahue "plan," although with three years at $2.5 million per remaining on his contract, he's not someone this tightwad owner would happily fire.

Then again, someone besides York or Donahue -- who got a four-year extension in September -- has to be the fall guy, so this situation bears watching. Donahue, for what it's worth, says he can envision no circumstance in which Erickson will not be coaching the team next year.

The front office, meanwhile, continues to evolve. According to several sources within the organization, Donahue is obsessed with the book Moneyball and aims to emulate Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane by using cutting-edge statistical analysis to find productive players at bargain rates.

The young executive spearheading these efforts, assistant general manager Paraag Marathe, is a Cal graduate with a Stanford business degree who, says one team source, has a staff of several numbers-crunching minions "who've probably never put on shoulder pads." Together, the source says, they are creating a 'Matrix' in which they believe every act on every specific point of a football field can be broken down statistically.

Whether or not this will ultimately prove successful remains to be seen, but York had best hope it's more effective than his propaganda efforts, which seem more and more pathetic as the losses mount. Consider last Sunday's game program, which featured a faded photo of legendary quarterback Joe Montana cocking his right arm to throw on the left side and an almost identical shot of current Niners QB Tim Rattay on the right.

Logic holds that most fans at Monster Park were downright offended by the suggestion that anyone, let alone the struggling Rattay, is in Montana's class. Of course, it could have been worse: Picture a program featuring a photo of DeBartolo on one side and York on the other.

Or, better yet, Nostradamus and Terrell Owens.