NFL PLAYOFFS : To Each His Policy : 49ers and Cowboys Take Different Routes to the Top of Football World

The San Francisco 49er president will be the one wearing a conservative suit.

It will be dark blue or gray. The tie will be perfect. The voice will be measured.

The Dallas Cowboy owner and general manager will be the one wearing a designer turtleneck, or at least a flashy suit.

The shoes will be slip-ons. The voice will be heard in Oakland if a back judge makes a bad call and this guy happens to be roaming the sidelines at the time.

The battle that will take place at muddy Candlestick Park in San Francisco on Sunday is much larger than merely a meeting of the NFL’s two best football teams.

It is much more than great players slugging it out for three hours to determine who, in two weeks, will compete in and probably dominate the Super Bowl.

This is not simply Star Wars.

This is Style Wars.

The clash involves not only people, but philosophies. The fight is not only to decide who is better, but who is right .

The 49ers, led by former corporate lawyer Carmen Policy, are “the Firm.”

Quiet, secretive, overly generous to their employees, unafraid of slamming the door on everyone else. The 49ers believe money can buy happiness. They are hoping this season will prove it.

The Cowboys, led by oilman Jerry Jones, are “WKRP in Cincinnati.”

Loud, fun, close-knit, that nutty family down the street. The Cowboys find happiness with players who have been with them since college, ones who believe that the only true star is the one on the side of their helmet.

One of the most celebrated 49ers is Deion Sanders, a player who has been there four months.

One of the most celebrated Cowboys is Bill Bates, mostly because he has been there 12 years.

Sanders, with his reputation as a mercenary wanderer, wouldn’t have lasted four months with the Cowboys.

Bates, a lovable overachiever, wouldn’t have lasted four minutes with the 49ers.

The only similarities between the organizations are their football smarts, their willingness to take chances. . . .

And the sweat on the brow of their executives come Sunday.

If the 49ers fail, then Policy fails.

He spent about $4 million last spring to buy a new defense and a new center. In doing so, he jeopardized the team’s financial future under the salary cap.

Rarely has the phrase all or nothing been so appropriate as when applied to the meaning of his mission.

“Anything short of going to the Super Bowl, this will not be a successful season,” Policy said.

If the Cowboys fail, then Jones fails.

His dream of being considered a successful football man will be, for the moment, dashed.

It was Jones, of course, who this spring fired then-coach Jimmy Johnson, hired Barry Switzer and kept most of his team intact while refusing to be lured by the wonder of free agency.

In other words, the anti-49er.

“One of our local papers gave me an ‘F’ in free agency,” Jones said. “I hope I get an ‘F’ in that every year.”

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The differences between the two men and their organizations become apparent when they discuss football.

Jones talks oil.

Policy talks gold.

“I sit behind that desk every day and get excited about an oil deal that I may not see a penny on for four or five years,” Jones says. “Because of everything involved, you’ve got to have patience. You’ve got to be able to project.

“And you have to be willing to be hurt a little bit now in order to do better later.”

This is the philosophy behind Jones’ decision to stick with Jimmy Johnson after the team won one game in Johnson’s first year . . . and his decision to fire Johnson after consecutive Super Bowl victories.

This is also the reason that of the 22 starters on offense and defense on Sunday, only four have played in a regular-season game for another team. And only one of those four has been with the Cowboys less than three years.

That means they have only one new starter, guard Derek Kennard.

“The biggest advantage this team has over other teams is continuity,” Jones said. “These guys know each other. They play hard for each other. I will not give that up.”

The 49er team portrait is a bit different. Of their 22 starters, seven have played with other teams. And six of those have been with the team less than two full seasons.

Linebackers Rickey Jackson, Gary Plummer and Ken Norton Jr., defensive backs Deion Sanders and Tim McDonald and center Bart Oates are all recent transfers.

To Policy, acquiring those players was like striking it rich quick.

“We could have gone to the Super Bowl three of the last four years, but fell short every time,” Policy said. “Then the whole NFL changed in front of us with free agency. We had a chance to get better faster. We had to take that chance.”

Considering the sporadic successes of free agents during the first two years of the new system, it was a big chance indeed.

More than 140 players changed teams in the first year of free agency, but the two Super Bowl finalists were the same, Dallas and Buffalo, and with most of the same players.

What made the 49ers think their situation would be different?

“If I can be immodest for a second, I really think there’s a certain strength to our organization,” Policy said. “There’s a standard that we’ve built, and that we try to live by. The players not only understand, they relish it.”

His newcomers have proved that. All but Norton have performed above expectations.

Until this season, many in the league didn’t realize that Plummer was so tough, that Jackson was still so young, and that Oates was still so quick.

Leigh Steinberg, a player agent who represents the highest salaried Cowboy (Troy Aikman) and 49er (Steve Young) says this standard comes from longtime owner Edward DeBartolo Jr.

“The 49ers are the masters of the concept of the caring, nurturing organization,” Steinberg said. “They are an organization that genuinely likes football players. They enjoy them as personalities, and they do their best to make sure their lives are good ones. Not every place is like that.”

Oates first noticed this standard upon arriving at training camp this season and discovering a working telephone in his room.

“It’s just a little thing, but it’s the first time in my career (10 years) that I haven’t had to spend a couple of days getting the phone set up myself,” he said. “I walked in, picked it up, it worked, and I was able to call my wife right away. That really showed me something.”

Plummer noticed it during one hot training camp day when the coaching staff ordered the players to take the field wearing “shorts and hats.”

In football vernacular, “hats” means helmets. But not on hot days with the 49ers.

“We actually practiced wearing hats, any kind of hat you wanted to wear,” he said. “It was great.”

If past Super Bowls are any indication, the 49ers will love Miami if they can defeat Dallas on Sunday. They can expect their quarters to be lavish, and their families to be treated like royalty.

Said McDonald of his arrival from the Arizona Cardinals: “It was like arriving in heaven.”

During the season, 49er officials diligently shield their team from only the most necessary media contact. And when a player says something outlandish, he is admonished by teammates.

“This team belongs to our veterans, it’s their team, they keep it in order,” Policy said. “Nobody from the outside is going to come in here and take over.”

So while Sanders has been allowed to keep his hip-hop end zone touchdown dance, he has been told to wait until he reaches the end zone to do it. And off the field, he has suddenly become as routine and reflective as Jerry Rice.”

Perhaps because they are more like a family than the 49ers, the Cowboys are less afraid to show their emotions toward each other. Hardly a week passes, it seems, without a story about a food fight or a helmet going through a locker-room wall.

Jones does not discount these emotions. Rather, he says they are what hold the team together during tough times.

“I am surprised by the success that the 49ers have had with all those free agents, because talent alone is not every bit of it,” he said. “I feel we have an advantage in that if our players win it, they know they have won three Super Bowls, all of them, together.”

* ERICKSON: Miami coach reportedly hired to replace Flores with Seahawks. C3