The dysfunctional 49ers and Rams have something in common

The spectacular festival of organizational dysfunction that is the San Francisco 49ers has stunningly been matched – nay, exceeded – by that of the Los Angeles Rams, and for that, 49ers fans can at least say, “Well, at least our tire fire isn’t as hot, large or foul-smelling as theirs.”

As though that were something in which to take pride.

But the two dysfunctions have something in common, and that is the vast number of ticket holders too repulsed to make the effort to watch them any longer.

The empty seats in Los Angeles were enough to convince owner Stan Kroenke how soft his ticket base is after only six home games in a brand new market, and how much of that absenteeism was due to head coach Jeff Fisher, who was fired Monday -- eight days after his contract was extended.

That isn't the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing -- that's the index finger not knowing what the middle finger is doing.

On the other hand, there are the 49ers, whose failings run deeper and perceived to be more widespread. Rumors, which have their greatest currency on Sundays because of the proliferation of pregame shows, had general manager Trent Baalke as being fired, head coach Chip Kelly maybe getting the same (after only seven home games, which makes him one game more proficient than Fisher) and even club president/most favored son Jed York maybe being eased out of the football side by his parents, John and Denise.

We listed those in order of likelihood, with Baalke being close to a mortal lock and Jed being close to having no chance, because parents do not sheet-jerk their kids’ legacies without a lot more agony than six wins in two years.

But the striking similarity between the two markets (other than the folly of building offenses around a running back and nothing else) is how easily fans who have paid for their tickets are willing to eat them as sunk costs and stay home as opposed to attending the games out of some misplaced fiscal obligation.

In many cities (say, Cleveland or Chicago, to name two), rancid performances get stadiums full of angry, drunken, booing misanthropes demanding severed heads at the top of the organizational chart. It makes for good video, as they say in the trade.

In L.A. and the Bay Area, contrarily, there is the far more damning, “Screw it; I’ve got better things to do” stance which frightened Kroenke into illogical but decisive action, and seems to be paralyzing the Yorks.

But paralysis, weirdly, is the better move for the moment. Baalke is almost surely to be sacrificed to the god of the feel-good solution, and his resume justifies it all. Kelly comes with a high buyout price and screams “We don’t know what we’re doing” to the disaffected fan base that already believes as much.

But the third one, suggested as a possibility by CBSSports’ Jason LaCanfora Sunday, citing ownership sources, seems least likely, because:

* John and Denise gave Jed the run of the team as his passage into financial adulthood, and taking back would cause some serious familial issues, the kind they would all find intolerable, especially at holiday gatherings.

* John is not anxious to get involved in football business again given how mightily toxic his time atop the organizational chart went. His name is still considered synonymous with water-bottle counting and reducing a long-hailed football ops department to soot. Jed was installed in the big chair by Denise to remove her husband from the firing line, only to find out that she hadn’t changed the public aim at all. Indeed, Jed took John's Steve Mariucci debacle and tripled down on it with Jim Harbaugh.

* There is no evidence that any of them would have the knowledge or wisdom to find the kind of 21st century Bill Walsh Denise’s brother Eddie did after he nearly ran the franchise into the earth’s crust in 1978 with Joe Thomas as the stiff, uncompromising and totally gormless (read: Baalke-esque) general manager in 1978.

Oh, and those Harbaugh-to-Los Angeles rumors? Discount them as Internet idiocy unless (a) Kroenke is willing to kick up his salary from its present $9 million per annum to, say, $13 million or so; (b) that salary comes with total control of football operations, which is how the Harbaugh-York marriage began to fray during and after Year Two; (c) that Harbaugh needs somewhere in his soul to prove he can re-dominate the NFL, only this time as the be-all and end-all that actually wins a Super Bowl; and (d) that his desire to jam his finger two knuckles into Jed's eye to honor his firing is greater than his gratitude to Michigan for providing him with what seems to be an ideal job.

In short, Harbaugh would be worth all of it to Kroenke, but it seems unlikely (though not impossible) that Kroenke would be worth all of it to Harbaugh. I wouldn’t fixate on that rumor too much, as deeply dipped in hilarity-based schadenfreude for the Yorks as it would be.

On the other hand, as long as we’re dealing with unrealistic parallels and whole-cloth rumors, it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility for the Yorks to consider Fisher as Kelly’s next defensive coordinator.

In the meantime, consider all those empty seats in Los Angeles that were filled three months ago, and in Santa Clara two years ago. Consider how they have changed the present and will more aggressively change the futures of both teams.

And then dream of a Christmas Eve in which the 49ers play at Los Angeles before nobody, because eye-searingly dreadful football and the commemoration of the birth of the Christian savior is a real sow for the ages. The game should open with an apology in lieu of the National Anthem, but in case it doesn’t, the 49ers and Rams will create an entirely new rivalry based on their separate abilities to reverse football evolution.

And if that doesn’t make you excited for the upcoming horrors of 2017, nothing will.