Steve Young can’t get the 49ers woeful season out of his system. But he says he doesn’t see things changing as long as ownership and upper management continue on the paths they’re on now.

Talking Wednesday on KNBR, Young decried the York family’s focus on making money.

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Jed York and ‘Hold me accountable’: How about some refunds for 49ers PSL holders? “In the NFL, you don’t have to win to make money,” Young said. “The greatest growth equity value teams are not necessarily the winners. In fact, if you think about the 49ers in the last 15 years since the Yorks owned the team, you’re talking about equity values that went from — I’m just rough now — $200 million in 2000 to well over maybe $2 billion. It’s like 10 times or more. It’s like Silicon Valley. That’s one of the great success stories of any tech business anywhere.

“That’s (the York’s) A-game. Their equity value in the team is their A game, it’s what drives them. It’s what drives most of the owners. It’s what matters. It’s what they think about. It’s what they talk about. And the B-game, is whether we win some games. It’s not that you don’t want to, or you don’t really want to, or it’s not really important. It’s just not the A-game. And so when it’s not the A-game, that’s the biggest issue with the NFL, is that success doesn’t track to success on the field. So you’re not held accountable.

“So no matter what we decide to do here, and my opinion is when you’re 1-12 or 1-13 or if we end up 1-15, to me by definition, everybody out to the parking lot. Every living thing out to the parking lot. And nobody gets back in unless you can prove you’re part of the solution. I mean everybody. That’s a tough thing to do because you might have to start over in all kinds of ways.”

Young said ownership has to decide if they want to change enough to put a winner on the field.

“And the calculus is, should we start over? Should we wipe the place out? Should we leave Trent (Baalke) and maybe do a coach? But that doesn’t look right because we kept a coaching carousel, so let Chip (Kelly) come. Who’s going to be with Chip? Because it’s all this calculus has to go on. And it really, as an ex-player who’s been around a long time, it’s frustrating to watch. Because it’s never true merit, true everyone in the parking lot and you literally are barred unless you can prove your value that makes this thing move forward.”

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Young also took issue with another former 49er quarterback, Trent Dilfer, and his assertion that the 1-12 49ers performance can’t be laid at the feet of Baalke, the general manager. Dilfer said faulted the coaching staff for not properly preparing the “groceries” Baalke gave them.

Young suggested that San Francisco’s quarterback situation with Blaine Gabbert and now Colin Kaepernick means there’s a huge hole in Dilfer’s theory. Without the right QB, the other parts don’t matter as much.

“The problem is that there is one job in football you’ve got to get right, and that’s quarterback,” Young said. “Every team that has no answer at quarterback, or is fading at that answer – let’s say the Rams, Arizona, Chicago, Buffalo – those teams are the … those teams are not going anywhere.

“And so you hand me all this grocery stuff? And I understand Trent has a great way of saying it, but the truth is, if you fail at putting that position in play, then you really don’t have a chance no matter what you have around it. And that’s what we’ve seen, a floundering, because we don’t have an answer. We have nothing to build off of.”

And then there is the issue of leadership. Young lit into both Baalke and coach Chip Kelly on that one, Kelly having said Wednesday he didn’t mind having mellow players rather than in-your-face screamers.

“You also don’t have leadership,” Young said. “Leadership is built by the personalities you put in the locker room – not just talent. “So yes, you might have – and I guess Trent is right, they are talented guys, and I guarantee you, look at any NFL team they’re loaded with the best athletes in the world. I get that.

“But football is not won by just throwing (together) the best athletes in the world. The best teams understand personalities and hot it first in their system. But the first thing you have to do is build the superstructure of who we are. What are we trying to do? Not just turn it over every year and just go get another guy, another coach, another player.”

Young then turned to comparing seeing the 49ers go to the Super Bowl four seasons ago and seeing the Patriots challenge to make it there every year. The 49ers caught fire for a little while, but under coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, the leadership structure sees the Patriots at or near the top year after year.

“To be a champion again – we were there briefly. We had it for a brief moment,” Young said of the 49ers’ making it to face the Ravens in February of 2013. And it disappeared. It was a little vein we hit. And I really believe, most teams every 10-15, you do (surge to the top) just by the nature of drafting high and getting a bunch of guys. But it doesn’t have legs.

“So we’ve got to develop what we have. We had it (in San Francisco under Joe Montana and Young from 1981-1998), the Patriots have it. There’s teams in there that are always around the top. You can say Green Bay’s up and down, but they’ve got that leadership in there. Denver. There’s just places it’s clear, and it’s been clear for a long time, if you are going to be an upper echelon NFL team, there’s so much more to do than tell me there a small differentiation against the players.

“So if you want to know about the 49ers, and you want to blame, it’s all over the place. But it’s not one place. And until you can say to anyone, `what’s a 49er?’ – we knew what a 49er was for 20 years. We need to know again. What are the 49ers? What’s the long plan? What’s the long-term plan that we’re going to have for who we are? And we’re going to get people in place and bet on them for five, six, seven years. Or else we’re just going to turn the turnstiles like the other 15-20 teams in the league that are just turnstiles.”