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49er Factshe San Francisco 49ers are an American football team located in the San Francisco Bay Area playing in the West Division of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The team was founded in 1946 as a charter member of the All-Amer-ica Football Conference (AAFC) and joined the NFL in 1949 after the two leagues merged.

The team plays its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, near its headquarters.The 49ers are known for having one of the NFL's greatest dynasties, winning �ve Super Bowl championships in just 14 years, between 1981 and 1994, with four of those champion-ships in the 1980s. The Super Bowl teams were led by Hall of Famers Joe Montana, Jerry Rice, Ronnie Lott, Steve Young, and coach Bill Walsh. With �ve Super Bowl wins, the 49ers are tied with rivals Dallas Cowboys for the second-most Super Bowl wins. The 49ers won the most regular season NFL games in both the 1980s.The name "49ers" comes from the name given to the gold prospectors who arrived in Northern California around 1849 during the California Gold Rush. The name was suggested to re�ect the voyagers who had rushed the West for gold. It is the only name the team has ever had and the team has always been within the San Francisco Bay Area. The team is legally and corporately regis-tered as the San Francisco Forty Niners.The San Francisco 49ers were the �rst major league professional sports franchise based in San Francisco, and one of the �rst professional sports teams based on the West Coast of the United States.The original 49ers logo was a mustached forty-niner gold miner from the 1849 California Gold Rush, dressed in plaid pants and a red shirt, jumping in midair with his hat falling o�, and �ring pistols in each hand: one nearly shoot-ing his foot, and the other pistol forming the word "Forty-Niners" from its smoke. An alternate logo with a shield-shaped crest formed from the number "49", with a football in the upper right quadrant and "SF" in the lower left quadrant was created in 1965 and used for marketing purposes until 1972. From 1962, the 49ers' logo has been the iconic "SF" within the center of a red oval; throughout the years the logo has had minor modi�cations, such as a black outlining on the intertwined "SF" that was added in 1989 and a gold trimming inside the oval that was added in 1996.In 2012, the 49ers were predicted to be the NFC West champions and possibly make a run for the Super Bowl. Starting the season 6–2, the 49ers went on to face the rival St. Louis Rams in Week 10. Alex Smith su�ered a concussion in the second quarter and exited the game. He was replaced by 2011 second-round pick Colin Kaepernick, who led the 49ers back to tie the game. The next week, Kaeper-nick and the 49ers blew out the Chicago Bears 32–7, and Harbaugh chose Kaepernick as the starter next week against the New Orleans Saints, despite Smith being cleared to play. A quarterback con-troversy began. Despite Smith leading the NFL in completion percentage (70%) and passer rating (104.1), Kaepernick was considered more dynamic with his scrambling ability and arm strength.-Kaepernick eventually started the rest of the season, going 5–2.

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In the second season with Jim Harbaugh at the helm, San Francisco rolled ahead in impressive fashion, beating Green Bay on their home turf in Week 1. In Week 7 (the bye week), the 49ers stood 6–2. Afterwards, things started to take a strange turn as the team hosted division rival St. Louis at home. The match went into overtime and with neither veteran kicker David Akers or his opposite number Greg Zuerlein able to score, it ended 24–24 for the NFL's �rst tie game since 2008. In addi-tion to the unusual ending, the game also saw Alex Smith concussed and his spot taken by backup QB Colin Kaepernick, who had been drafted from Nevada in 2010 but had yet to see any regular season action. Kaepernick thus started the next week's game versus Chicago. The rookie starter

stunned nearly everyone by throwing 243 yards and two TD passes in a 32–7 rout of the Bears. Although Alex Smith was subsequently cleared by team doctors to play, Kaeper-

nick's performance caused Jim Harbaugh to name him starting QB until further notice. This move was not without some controversy since Smith had delivered

a solid, if not outstanding performance over the last two seasons without any crippling mistakes. Kaepernick's stronger arm and scrambling ability

proved a di�cult temptation to resist with the added dimension of the "Pistol O�ense". Kaepernick's dynamic play added more to his cause

by trouncing the Saints in New Orleans in Week 12. But the following week, a bad play at the end of the rematch with the Rams resulted in San Francisco's third loss of the season. Despite this, Harbaugh announced that he was going to continue starting Kaepernick as long as he "has the hot hand".Colin Kaepernick was named the permanent starter before the �rst playo� game. Although San Francisco overcame a 17-point de�cit against the Atlanta Falcons to win the NFC championship game, the team fell just short of overcoming a 22-point de�cit in Super Bowl XLVII, at one point scoring 17 points in less than four and a half minutes in the Febru-

ary 3, 2013 game. The 49ers moved to a 5-1 Super Bowl record with the 34-31 loss to the Baltimore Ravens.On February 27, 2013, the

49ers agreed to trade Smith to the Kansas City Chiefs for the Chiefs' second round pick in the 2013 NFL Draft and a conditional pick in the

2014 NFL Draft.The Seattle Seahawks have become a new rival of the 49ers, following the NFL's realignment in 2002 that put both teams in the

same division (Seattle had been a brief former rival during their inaugural 1976 season, when the team was in the old pre-realignment NFC West). Prior to

2002, the teams played each other almost every season during the pre-season, but only every three years during the regular season when the AFC West and NFC West

teams faced each other. So far, their rivalry has not been as intense as other division foes because for the most part both teams have not been good at the same time. In the middle to late part of the decade, the Seahawks lost the division and their favorable record against the 49ers re�ected this. However, games at CenturyLink Field, one of the toughest stadiums to play at as a visiting team, have still been di�cult to win. The 49ers have a 3-7 record all-time at that stadium, with their largest margin of victory there being ten points, and failed to score a touchdown in four of those losses. The rivalry has intensi�ed after the 49ers hired Jim Harbaugh out of Stanford in 2011, as he and Seahawks and former USC head coach Pete Carroll had an intense rivalry in college. Seattle leads the all-time series 16–15 now that on January 19, 2014, the 49ers lost to Seahawks in the NFC Championship game, 17–23.The 49ers are an amazing football team.

Source: wikipedia.org

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