Daily Madden: York Demands Too Much From A Head Coach
SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) - In his news conference discussing the departure of coach Jim Harbaugh, 49ers owner Jed York said he'll settle for nothing less than a Super Bowl victory.
"Well, good luck to him," John Madden told the KCBS Radio morning crew. "It's hard to win a football game, a regular season game... I think sometimes we put too much on the final game -- that if you don't win the Super Bowl game, you didn't have a successful year. Now I don't agree with that at all. I think there are a lot of teams that are good teams, that played well, that accomplished everything that they could, that got everything out of their team and didn't win the Super Bowl."
Madden said no one can be expected to win the Super Bowl every year.
"Who's considered the best coach in the NFL? Bill Belichick. Now when's the last time he won one? If you put that same criterion on him and say, you know, the only successful year is when you win the Super Bowl, he would have been gone... You can make any statement if you're the guy that can't be fired. That's always been one of the problems in all pro sports. The guy that a lot of times has the least amount of knowledge about what's going on is the owner, and he can't be fired."
Madden said he's still surprised Harbaugh is no longer the coach of the 49ers.
"I know some people referred to the fact that they were 8 and 8 and that's why it happened," Madden said. "That's not why it happened. It happened well before they were 8 and 8. It happened after they were coming off playing in the championship game... There's nothing that's really smooth in any type of relationships with coaching and general managers and owners and organizations and all that stuff. There's nothing that's perfectly smooth. The thing that surprised me is whatever those problems were, they really weren't spelled out, and that's probably okay too. But whatever they were, I'm still surprised that they couldn't be worked out." (6:20)
Daily Madden
Listen to the John Madden segment live weekday mornings at 8:15 and Monday and Friday mornings at 9:15 on KCBS All News 740 AM/106.9 FM.
