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49ers tackle online PR nightmare

Jennifer Guevin Former Managing Editor / Reviews
Jennifer Guevin was a managing editor at CNET, overseeing the ever-helpful How To section, special packages and front-page programming. As a writer, she gravitated toward science, quirky geek culture stories, robots and food. In real life, she mostly just gravitates toward food.
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Jennifer Guevin
2 min read
After more than 30 years of mystery, Deep Throat's identity was finally revealed on Tuesday. But the only leak news junkies are talking about today is an embarrassing video leaked online (and no, it doesn't involve bride-to-be Paris Hilton).

Apparently, the San Francisco 49ers are rushing to deal with a leak of their own. The San Francisco Chronicle has gotten its hands on a racy training tape created by the football team's public relations director, Kirk Reynolds, and has made a prudently-blurred version of it available online. The tape is loaded with all manner of off-color jokes, ranging from racial stereotypes to mayoral corruption to topless lesbian make-out sessions. It features Reynolds playing the city's mayor for a day, as well as 49ers' players and staff in questionable roles, such as former team trainer George Chung playing an over-the-top Chinese stereotype a la Mickey Rooney's Japanese landlord in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," and linebacker Jeff Ulbrich being thrown into a jail cell with the warning "Don't drop the soap."

The tape was reportedly shown to players at training camp last August, as part of an effort to teach them how to communicate with the media and avoid public embarrassments (presumably much like the one the 'Niners are currently negotiating because of the tape).

Now that the video has been made public, the 49ers' organization is working to put out the fires surrounding it, with a public statement rebuking Reynolds for making the video, which, it says was never approved by anyone else. They are no doubt wishing he had heeded his own advice. In the video, Reynolds says, "Be careful of what you say and what you do. If you do something controversial...it will have an impact on this team...Be professional. After all, this is professional football."

To be sure, the tape is tasteless. A faux lesbian wedding that takes place in a well-known San Francisco strip club and a section devoted to what players should do in the event that they are arrested are not exactly the image the program probably hopes to put forth. But in the end, what are we looking at here? A bunch of tacky locker room jokes intended for professional jocks? Shocking.

What is interesting about the story is the rapidity with which it has taken off. One has to wonder if such a story would have made front-page news before a time when readers could access the video with two short clicks.