Respect this ESPN

The road to the Superbowl goes through San Francisco, as it did in the late 80's and early 90's when The San Francisco 49ers were building a legacy and achieving greatness under legendary head coach and Hall of Famer Bill Walsh. If you visited the ESPN website today, you wouldn't know a thing about it. The Niners have been off the national radar since San Francisco won Superbowl XXIX and Gary Plummer ripped the imaginary monkey off the back of Steve Young after they dismantled a pretty good San Diego Chargers team 49-26.

Since those days, the internet has become the most valuable asset for sports fans across the planet, sports talk radio has become bigger than ever before and twitter is the most popular avenue for players to run their mouth and flap their collective gums. Jerry Rice, the greatest football player in the history of the NFL was brought to Bristol Connecticut this week to talk about, you guessed it, the New York football Giants. Linda Cohn had the balls, yes the balls, to ask him six questions about the New York Giants and one question about San Francisco. 

It's easy to say that San Francisco has not been given enough credit nor have they received the respect they deserve. But let's be honest, we are 49ers fans. We don't need ESPN or any other national sports company to validate the success of this franchise. We are easily the toughest group of fans in professional football. If you doubt that statement, allow me to explain. Name another fan base that grew up with 5 superbowl championships, the greatest quarterback in the history of football, who threw balls to the greatest football player in the history of the game who were both coached by a man who single handedly revolutionized the game of football as we know it. I am that fan. Is it even humanly possible to have higher expectations than Niner fans? Allow me to take this one step further. Let's discuss Alex Smith for a moment. The guy has been absolutely dreadful for the six years he has played in the NFL and just a few short days ago, he dropped  the New Orleans Saints, the team every single expert claimed would come to San Francisco and break their 0-4 road playoff drought and threw a TD pass to Vernon Davis that many ( I hate nicknames so I refuse to play that game) are calling The Catch III. He has this team and it's first year head football coach playing in the NFC Championship game and the first thing out of my mouth on Sunday morning after that amazing and incredible victory. Can he do it again? 

Slice this pie however you want, but the reality of the situation is extremely simple. East Coast biased exists and more importantly, I don't give a damn! ESPN, Sports Illustrated and every group of nut jobs in between can avoid my team all they want. They can disrespect this team, it's fans, it's players and it's success all they want and I don't care. I know Niner fans better than any of those organizations ever will and I know this much. We live, die and bleed 49ers football and this town has higher expectations for their football team than any other franchise in the NFL. We know who we are, we know what we want and we won't be happy until the final second ticks off the clock in Indianapolis on Sunday February 5th and Jed York takes the Lombardi trophy from the hands of Roger Goodell. That's when others will give us respect and by that point, we still won't give a damn because it will be too late.