When the Pro Football Hall of Fame class of 2012 is announced Saturday, finalist Eddie DeBartolo Jr. might not be watching NFL Network.

DeBartolo, 65, has a prior engagement which could interfere with the announcement: The flag football game of his 8-year-old grandson, Asher.

Yes, more than a decade removed from his legendary 23-season run as the 49ers owner, DeBartolo’s schedule, in some ways, still revolves around football.

His devotion to the 49ers netted quite a haul: five Super Bowl trophies, 13 division titles and 16 playoff appearances in his final 18 years at the helm. That’s not a bad Hall-of-Fame platform on which to stand. And it might earn DeBartolo induction into Canton, particularly in a year in which there are no slam-dunk inductees among the 15 modern-day finalists.

There are questions, of course, about how Hall-of-Fame voters will view DeBartolo’s abrupt exit from the NFL in 1999. After pleading guilty in federal court for failing to report a bribe request, DeBartolo was fined $1 million and suspended from the league for a year. During his suspension, the family reorganized its business operations and his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, assumed control of the 49ers.

Today, DeBartolo lives in Tampa, Fla., and is CEO of DeBartolo Holdings LLC, which is involved in money management, real estate and sports entertainment, among other interests.

I spoke with DeBartolo this week in advance of Saturday’s announcement of this year’s Hall-of-Fame class:

Q: Where will you be when the Hall of Fame class is announced Saturday?

ED: I have a flag-football game with my eldest grandson, my 8-year-old. I hope that it will be over. I’m obviously very humbled that we have gotten to this point. I don’t know what’s going to transpire Saturday. I have no high expectations, but because of my career in San Francisco and my players, my coaches, my fans, I’m just thrilled beyond belief. Just to be among that 15.

Q: You will be a spectator – not playing in the flag-football game?

ED: Yes, yes (laughing). It’s just flag football. But he was in the backyard at his parent’s home last night and he was going out for a pass from his father and he ran into a tree and he had to go to the hospital for an X-ray. Oh my god, when it rains, it pours. But he’ll be in the lineup. He’s not on IR. He’s a really good athlete.

Q: Were you surprised to be a Hall of Fame finalist?

ED: Absolutely. I was totally surprised. I was flabbergasted to be honest with you and I was humbled beyond belief. Your life kind of flashes before you, at least my 23 years, my football life. And I start thinking about Bill. And I start thinking about all our players and coaches and out front-office people. A lot of things go through your mind, including the great fans that I have a kinship with. I’m just very humbled.

Q: Carmen Policy said no one else was interested in hiring Bill Walsh when you hired him. Your dad wasn’t sold on him. At that time, did it take guts to hire Walsh?

ED: Not really. I was sold on Bill. I interviewed him at a hotel in downtown San Francisco. I was sold on him right away. I had no qualms about him being the first person for the job.

Q: Why were you sold on him?

ED: We hit it off right away. Our initial meeting, when he was hired, didn’t take longer than 15 minutes. I guess you could say, we talked about family, we talked about his ideas for the organization. How he ran the Stanford program and what he foresaw with the 49ers. I was just very impressed with him and the way he was. It was almost like love at first sight.

Q: You helped convince Walsh to keep coaching when he wanted to become general manager after the 1982 season …

ED: He had gone through some tough times and he was thinking about his situation. We had some pretty serious conversations and I think that Bill was kind of torn. He had spent his entire life in coaching. And I think that he probably, at that time, and we’re going back many years, he probably figured that maybe he’d had enough. But we talked it out. And I told him that life was much better on the inside than the outside. We talked like civilized men. I think we even had a drink over it.

Q: You were viewed as a trailblazer among modern owners due your generosity with players and emphasis on creating a family atmosphere. Was that just your personality, instincts, or did someone model that ownership style for you?

ED: I think I took that from the way we treated our employees in Youngstown. I think that it was something that my father started years ago. We had 600 employees in Youngstown and we considered each and every one of them a member of our family. If someone was ill in their family, we knew it. If somebody had a problem, they could come to us and they always knew that. That’s something I tried to carry to the 49ers. And I just had that relationship with everyone, from the coaches to the front-office people and especially the players. We were very close. It’s hard to put it into words. It was just relationships.

Q: Did you surprise you that that leadership style was viewed as revolutionary?

ED: I never paid even paid much attention to that. I just did what I thought was best for me for to do with my organization. I didn’t pay attention to other teams or how they operated. I was concerned only with the San Francisco 49ers, our people, our coaches, our players and our fans. I didn’t pay much attention to the other organizations. My concern was the San Francisco 49ers.

Q: Are there owners today whose style you admire?

ED: There’s quite a few. Obviously, the Rooneys come to mind. And the Tischs and Maras. Bob Kraft is a great owner. Jeff Lurie is a really good owner. Dan Snyder is a friend of mine. He’s got some things he has to overcome. Jerry Jones is a very dear friend of mine and I know he’s fallen on some hard times in the last couple years. But he had to build that stadium – he had his mind elsewhere. I just think that he’s just a super owner. He’s an innovator and pacesetter. And Pat Bowlen’s a friend of mine. I think he’s done a very good job with the Broncos. I could go and on, but that seems to be the people that I’ve remained close with.

Q: How are you keeping busy today?

ED: (DeBartlo Holdings LCC does) money management, investments. We have a real-estate company that’s very large. We started it off with small, but we’ve got holdings in the billions. We still are the single largest shareholder in Simon Property Group, which is a gigantic shopping-mall company. We have a pizza chain. We do sports marketing and hospitality. There are a myriad of things that we are doing.

Q: It doesn’t sound as if you are eyeing retirement …

ED: No, not at all. I go to Montana. I have a place in Montana that I’ve had for 27 or 28 years and I go there whenever I can. I probably spend four to six months a year there. I just think that retirement is something that people don’t want to do because once someone retires, I think you are asking for nothing but trouble. I have a lot of things to keep me busy. I have a lot of things that I enjoy doing. I enjoy my children now. I’m able to spend time with them. They’re grown. I have (three) grandkids. We spend a lot of time together and it’s sort of rounded out my life and made it all worthwhile.

Q: Time seems to have allowed people to appreciate your legacy and what you accomplished with the 49ers. Given the way you left the NFL, did you ever wonder if the day would come when you’d be a Hall-of-Fame finalist?

ED: I thought that, OK, there were mistakes made. And I think they’ve all been explained and rehashed and everything else. But I think if you’re writing a history of the NFL, and I’m not necessarily talking about myself, there’s been a lot of people that have had their problems. But I think you have to take into consideration all the history of the NFL. Again, I’m not trying to say Eddie DeBartolo belongs in the Hall of Fame, but I think that that sequence of events that we had as a team through the ‘80s and the early ‘90s, almost a decade-and-a-half, deserves some recognition. It falls in an area that, really, whatever transpired shouldn’t be taken into consideration. I know it is and it probably should be with some people, but I just think I’ll let the chips falls where they may. And we’ll let our record stand on its own.