How They Got Their Name: San Francisco 49ers

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Many professional teams have nicknames that have nothing to do with the area they are located in.  That is not the case with the San Francisco 49ers.  In the early 1940s, an ambitious Tony Morabito lobbied to the NFL a few times for an expansion franchise in San Francisco, to no avail.  At the time, Chicago was the furthest west an NFL team was located.  Not giving up, Morabito ran into some luck when the newly formed All-America Football Conference (AAFC) began in 1946 and was interested in his idea for a San Francisco team.  As a part owner with Allen Sorrell and E.J. Turre (fellow workers in the lumber business), as well as his brother Victor, Tony Morabito had realized his goal.  It was actually the first professional sports team the city of San Francisco ever had.

The name came pretty naturally.  Sorrell suggested they name the team the 49ers, after the thousands of fortune-seekers who flocked into the Sierra Nevada mountains east of San Francisco in search of gold in 1849.  The San Francisco 49ers were born and the name has stuck ever since.  Just three years after the AAFC began, the league folded in 1949.  But that turned out to be a launching pad for the Bay Area’s football team.  Proving to be a success in those three years, the NFL decided to add San Francisco, along with Cleveland and Baltimore, as new franchises to their league, exactly 100 years later than the year the team is named for.  After play began in 1950, the 49ers haven’t looked back and have been one of the NFL’s most successful teams ever since.

Garett