The question of whether the proximity of an electrical substation to the 49ers’ practice facility continues to drive conversation. Because 49ers players continue to give the conspiracy theory oxygen.
49ers tight end George Kittle recently boiled it all down to one simple request: Let’s make sure it’s not an issue.
Kittle gave extensive comments about the situation in an interview with Jordan Rose of Complex.
“One of my teammates put it really good, Kyle Juszyczyk, our fullback,” Kittle said. “And he said, ‘As a professional athlete, you’re always trying to get one percent better.’ Like, ‘Is this ice tub, is this rehab-recovery thing, is this red-light therapy, does it make me one-percent better?’ Because then you can stack all those up and you’re like, ‘Hey, you’re three-percent better than the next guy because you’re doing all this stuff.’ If something’s affecting like negatively 0.25 percent, you’d want to know about it. Like whether it’s this type of cleat is hurting me, this type of shoulder pads is, like, increas[ing] my risk to get hurt. You’d probably change that.
“So I think all we’re saying is, as players, it’s like, we would just like to look into it to make sure it’s not something. That’s what I would just appreciate. Like, ‘Hey, this isn’t gonna affect you guys.’ And then if they come out and they do some research, like, ‘No, you guys are good,’ then I don’t think we’ll think about it.”
That’s a fair and reasonable request and the 49ers have said they’ll look into it. Unfortunatey, we live in a post-truth dystopia in which self-serving opinion trumps fact.
Thus, regardless of what the research shows, someone won’t believe it. And Kittle has something that could justify someone/anyone to reject the research as unreliable.
“Now. one thing that messes me up with it — this is tough,” Kittle said. “My rookie season, there used to be trees in between the electrical substation and our practice facility, and there’s a fence there, too. And above the fence, all the trees had no leaves on them, year-round. . . . All dead. There’s a couple bunches of leaves every once in a while, and it was like that — no one notices it until you point it out to people. Like, I didn’t point it out to coach [Kyle] Shanahan until like 2021.
“Like, that was pointed out to me my rookie season, I was like, ‘That’s kind of weird, yeah. It is what it is.’ But then this year the NFL came in and cut them all down. So they’re not there anymore, so no one can see them. So it’s only us vets that know that that was the truth. I don’t think anyone’s talking about that yet, but that one messed me up. I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s no loose on these trees. Why?’”
Kittle then tried to make light of the situation, after lighting the fuse on the dead-tree theory.
“My argument for it is this,” Kittle said. “Like, Fred Warner, he practices there and trains there year-round, and he’s had one injury his entire career. So it’s like — now, did he just evolve and he absorbed the radiation? I don’t know. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. But it’s just like, let’s just figure out if it’s actually harming the players or not, and hopefully it’s not. It’s easy.”
It’s easy, as long as the outcome of the team’s examination of the issue is accepted. No matter what the 49ers conclude, someone will dispute it. And someone who has an offer to join the team in free agency will choose to take the same offer from a team with a practice facility that presents no risk whatsoever, credible or not, from the proximity of an electrical substation.
