| Seifert Leads New Team Into Old Home
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DATE: Oct. 15, 1999
PUBLICATION: NFL.com
Sunday is Alumni Day in San Francisco. The 49ers will trot out their collection of legends from the decades, with a particular emphasis on the Super Bowl champions of 10 years ago.
Therefore, there is perhaps no more appropriate day to welcome back a former team fixture, and the head coach of that Super Bowl XXIV championship squad of a decade ago. Now coaching the Carolina Panthers, former 49ers head coach George Seifert will step into 3Com Park for the first time wearing colors other than the familiar scarlet and gold.
It's not the first time a general has returned to the scene of past conquests. In 1815, Napoleon emerged from his exile on the island of Elba to proclaim to the French, "I have returned." However, the comeback was probably easier for le petit general than it will be for Seifert. After all, Napoleon wasn't leading the Russian army when he marched back into Paris.
"I don't know that I'll be into the (return) part of it," Seifert said. "In fact, I know I won't. It has nothing to do with lack of respect, anything like that. It was one of the greatest times of my life, but it's in my past."
In leading the Panthers, Seifert brings in the one visiting NFC West club with any measure of recent success on Candlestick Point. Since 1991, the 49ers have lost just four of 29 divisional home games. Half of those losses were to the Panthers, with both of those losses coming when Seifert still stood on the 49ers' sideline.
Seifert left San Francisco as the franchise's winningest coach, both in overall victories (108) and winning percentage (75.5), the latter figure of which was the highest in NFL history.
He is but one of the conquering heroes to return. Along with him in the electric blue and silver will be several former 49ers, notably fullback William Floyd, linebacker Kevin Greene, cornerback Eric Davis and tight end Wesley Walls. But each of those have come back to 3Com in enemy garb before, and each of those were present for the both the success and setbacks of the Panthers' roller-coaster trip of the last three years (which has continued through two close losses in the first four games).
"I think as a coach, I've got to get a win," Seifert said. "That drives me right now. It just so happens that I am looking at a familiar uniform. But it's, 'What can we do to give ourselves an opportunity to win a game?' Their players are not going to be concerned with it, and I expect our players could care less about that aspect of it. They want to get a win, too."
Seifert is no less consumed by winning than he was in his days with the 49ers, even as the victories have been more difficult to come by as the Panthers rebuild from last year's 4-12 disappointment. The two years away from coaching — only one of which was spent as a CBS Sports analyst — did nothing to dull his competitiveness and his fire and obviously opened his eyes to the task of building a champion instead of taking over a defending Super Bowl winner, as he did 10 years ago.
"There's so much in life, so many things out there to be done and what I've been able to accomplish and the thing I've been part of as far as San Francisco was great," he said on his first day as Panthers coach. "It was wonderful. I loved it. It was the city where I grew up and then to become the head football coach, that's a unique situation. I've done that. I've been there.
"There seems like there has to be something else. There has to be other things in life to become involved with and challenges to face up to. And that's kind of an overwhelming factor."
It's a challenge that will see its most awkward — but potentially most memorable — chapter on the visitor's sideline Sunday.
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