The Top 10 Teams : 1994 49ers Were Best of the 20th Century; 1927 Yankees, 1972 Lakers in Top Three

Four months ago, sports fans who tuned in the NFL’s 63rd annual championship game saw a unique football team.

The San Francisco 49ers, a big Super Bowl winner that day, were more than just that.

They were the team of the century--the best I’ve seen in any sport, and the best we’ve had in America, I feel sure, in more than 100 years.

Who’s No. 2?

A 1927 team--the New York Yankees.

Winning 110 games, the ’27 Yankees led the American League from beginning to end as Lou Gehrig batted .373 and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs.

No. 3: The 1971-72 Wilt Chamberlain Lakers.

A 33-game Laker winning streak that season remains the NBA’s peak single-season accomplishment.

Your call could well differ from mine, for, during a 95-year period, numerous considerations matter: overall ability, achievement, impact and, among other things, patterns of multi-year excellence.

Moreover, in a century, many great teams can and did surface.

But none greater than the 49ers.

As directed by quarterback Steve Young, the 1994 49ers showed, for the first time in any sport, how to win a major championship with offense alone.

In particular, they demonstrated that when a passing attack is designed and coached with extreme care and skill--and when it is operated by athletes as gifted as Young, Jerry Rice and Ricky Watters--it can’t be stopped.

To climax the 1994 season, the 49ers surrendered 26 points in the Miami Super Bowl but scored 49 as their air force blew away the San Diego Chargers.

With that, the San Francisco organization became the first to complete a century-long transition from total dependence on defense and running plays to total trust in passing.

The critical change had begun in the early 1980s under Bill Walsh, the 49ers’ 1979-88 coach. Introducing the so-called West Coast offense, Walsh substituted short, quick rhythm passes for the running game that until then had been the base for offensive football.

By 1994, the 49ers were using their ever more intricate pass offense as a substitute for not only runs but defense as well--and even for a kicking game.

As a breakthrough in the long evolvement of football, that was both intellectual and athletic. For it requires far less thought and talent to run off tackle, or to play defense, than to create a pass offense that can’t be stopped.

The 49er innovations upset long-established ways of thinking. Conventional coaches and commentators have always held that offense entertains but defense wins.

That was even said of the offensively extraordinary ’27 Yankees, who on defense rotated an 18-game-winning pitcher, two 19-game winners, and 22-game winner Waite Hoyt.

But it has never been said of the 1994 49ers, who are unique in one further sense. Unlike other all-time champions, they’ll tee it up again this year.

Comparing champions, here are my nominations for the top 10 teams of the 20th Century:

1. 1994 49ERS

Rice, Young and Watters, the three stars, were complemented by a seasoned offensive line and coached by a rare pair, George Seifert and his offensive coordinator, Mike Shanahan, now head coach at Denver. As Walsh’s successor, Seifert is neither a genius nor an exceptional talent scout, but he is obviously the right fit for this team, which, with hands-on owner Eddie De Bartolo and his staff, has sustained its brilliance for an unparalleled 14 years, winning five Super Bowls.

The 1994 offense was Shanahan’s, based on Walsh’s. In Shanahan football, the offense not only passes first to set up runs. It also features specially designed passes tailored to specific opportunities--as when, for instance, the 49ers found the way to get marked-man Rice open deep for a long touchdown pass on the third play of this year’s Super Bowl.

2. 1927 YANKEES

Even though baseball’s competition level wasn’t as high in the 1920s as it got in subsequent racially integrated decades, the Yankees of that early time, who won six pennants in eight seasons, set a standard that hasn’t yet been exceeded. In consecutive World Series, the 1927 and ’28 Yankees were 8-0. Outfielder Earle Combs hit .356 leading off in 1927, when four others combined for 544 RBIs: first baseman Gehrig 175, outfielder Ruth 164, outfielder Bob Meusel 103, and second baseman Tony Lazzeri 102.

They might have lost, all the same, to Casey Stengel’s 1954 Yankees, who, midway in another dynasty, won 103 games with Mickey Mantle and four other .300 hitters. But 1954 was a strange season. Before the New York Giants won the World Series, 4-0, Cleveland erupted to win 110 American League games. That kept Stengel from parlaying 10 consecutive pennants--and 11 in 12 years.

3. 1971-72 LAKERS

Wilt Chamberlain, who at 7-feet-1 displayed the athleticism of a 6-foot-6 Hall of Famer, was the transcendent figure on two of the top three NBA teams of all time, the ’72 Lakers and 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers. All these years later, the two Chamberlain champions are still 1-2 in NBA won-lost columns with nearly identical records, 69-13 and 68-13--in part because of the big man’s shot-blocking and rebounding.

As a rebounder, Chamberlain maintained an astounding career average, 22.9, setting a record that could last forever, now that NBA players are taking fewer shots in what has become a slower game. With Jerry West and Gail Goodrich in the backcourt and Bill Sharman coaching, the 1971-72 Lakers, en route to their first NBA title, won an improbable 33 straight, home and away. That won’t be done again, either.

4. 1992 DALLAS COWBOYS

The role that coaching plays in competitive sports has seldom been as obvious as it was in 1992-93, when the Dallas Cowboys won two Super Bowls. With Jimmy Johnson in charge, and Norval Turner calling the plays as offensive coordinator and Dave Wannstedt and Butch Davis as defensive coordinators, they could have beaten any NFL predecessor. Whether they would have grown enough under Johnson to take the 1994 49ers is a what-if secret. By then, Johnson was gone.

To win Super Bowl XXVII, Dallas’ ‘92 offense scored all five touchdowns on surprisingly aggressive plays: four first-down passes by Troy Aikman and a 10-yard run by Emmitt Smith on third and goal. That’s coaching.

5. 1979 USC FOOTBALL TROJANS

Twelve NFL first-round draft choices were on the 1979 USC football team, whose members, the most talented in college football history, won three Rose Bowl games and a national championship. On offense, the Trojans lined up two Heisman Trophy winners in the same backfield, fullback Marcus Allen and tailback Charles White. And up front, three future all-pros rotated at one tackle position, where, after Anthony Munoz was injured, Don Mosebar replaced him until he was injured, when Coach John Robinson sent in Bruce Matthews.

The defensive backfield: Ronnie Lott, Dennis Smith, Joey Browner and Jeff Fisher--three future all-pros and the future coach of the Houston Oilers. They backed up linebackers Chip Banks and Riki (Gray) Ellison. At tight end: Hoby Brenner. Guard Brad Budde, playing in the same line with Keith Van Horne, Roy Foster, and Munoz, Mosebar or Matthews, won the Lombardi Award. Of 14 first-team All-Americans, one was quarterback Paul McDonald.

6. 1974 OAKLAND A’S

As talent scout and builder of champions, Charlie O. Finley was, clearly, the baseball man of the century. Taking over a sad-sack franchise, he built it up by hand, blending outfielder Reggie Jackson and pitcher Catfish Hunter with so many other productive players that the A’s won five consecutive division titles, and three World Series from 1972-74. Previously, that sort of thing could only be done by Yankee committees. Since Finley, it hasn’t been done at all.

His best team beat the Dodgers in the 1974 World Series, 4-1, whereupon baseball changed its rules in the middle of Finley’s game. Two powerful new gimmicks, arbitration and free agency, ended his run in Oakland, a Raider-mad town that wouldn’t give Finley enough support to outbid New York, or even Minnesota, for new-age talent.

7. 1964-65 BOSTON CELTICS

During Bill Russell’s time, when the nation’s 100 best basketball players were compressed into nine teams, he dominated the others, leading the Boston Celtics to eight consecutive NBA titles and to 11 in 13 years. In 1964-65, as the Celtics won by 14 games, Red Auerbach coached five Hall of Famers: guards Sam and K.C. Jones, forwards Tom Heinsohn and John Havlicek, and center, later player-coach, Russell.

If the NBA’s top three teams were the 1971-72 Lakers, the 1966-67 76ers, and the 1964-65 Celtics, No. 4 was the 1986-87 Lakers. Commanded by Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar--two of the five best of all time--the 86-87 Lakers, 12-3 in the playoffs, won 81 of 97 games. In the ‘80s, those Lakers won five NBA titles.

8. 1976 PITTSBURGH STEELERS

For six years, 1974 through ‘79, the Pittsburgh Steelers lined up the best football players ever grouped on one team--from offensive stars Terry Bradshaw and Lynn Swann to defensive star Mean Joe Greene--and won four Super Bowls. But in 1976, their finest team, the one the Steelers themselves rank No. 1, didn’t even get to the final game.

After starting 1-4, the ’76 Steelers, to make the playoffs, had to run the table and did, winning nine in a row--with five shutouts. Then in playoff Game 1, injuries took out their backfield, Franco Harris and Rocky Bleier, who missed Game 2 as the 13-1 Raiders won handily on the way to an easy Super Bowl victory over Minnesota. In the ‘70s, when the Raiders and Steelers were the NFL’s best, Pittsburgh had more talent and, except for 1976, more luck.

9. 1972 UCLA BASKETBALL BRUINS

John Wooden, the basketball coach of the 20th Century, had a touch that made him unique in college sports. That was most spectacularly proved in the early ‘70s, when his UCLA teams won 88 in a row. Although it’s more difficult to win 33 NBA games in a row--as the Lakers did in that era--the Wooden streak was historic. So were his 10 NCAA titles--seven consecutively.

He might have had his best team in 1971-72, center Bill Walton’s sophomore year, when the Bruins romped through a 30-0 season--every victim falling by five points or more. They were 30-0 again in 1972-73. In the ‘60s, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the NCAA tournament MVP a record three times, Wooden warmed up with a 47-game winning streak.

10. 1934 ST. LOUIS CARDINALS

The century’s most colorful ballclub? That was the Gas House Gang, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals. Of the 49 games won that year by pitcher Dizzy Dean and his brother, Daffy, three were on the last three days of the season. Staying even with the New York Giants, Dizzy first shut out Cincinnati, 4-0, then Daffy won, 6-1. On getaway day, as the Dodgers finally beat the Giants, Dizzy shut out Cincinnati again, 9-0, amusing such Gas House characters as Leo Durocher, Pepper Martin, playing-manager Frankie Frisch and Joe (Ducky) Medwick.

Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis personally threw Medwick out of one World Series game when a Detroit crowd wouldn’t let him line up in left field, bombing him with apples and oranges after Medwick had exchanged insults with Tiger players and fans. In that Series, Daffy was 2-0, Dizzy 2-1.