KNBR interviews ex-49er the station fired after sharing sex stories

Former 49ers linebacker Gary Plummer was welcomed onto Wednesday’s edition of “Murph & Mac” on KNBR with open arms, a stark departure from how things ended between him and the station 12 years ago.

The 1994 Super Bowl champion went on the morning radio show to speak about how George Kittle paid homage to him by wearing a shirt that read “F—k Dallas.” Plummer wore a shirt with the same phrase ahead of the 1994 NFC Championship Game against the Cowboys, while Kittle wore his during Sunday’s 42-10 blowout win. The former linebacker played in San Francisco for the final four seasons of his career, from 1994 to 1997.

Plummer was once a regular fixture at KNBR as the 49ers’ radio color commentator from 1998 to 2011. However, the station fired him in the wake of a sexually explicit interview he gave to a show called “Lady Brain.” The topics included his penis, his open marriage, and his and his teammates’ many sexual escapades, along with a story about teaching his older brother how to give oral sex. The episode was briefly uploaded online before Plummer reportedly asked to have it taken down.

It’s worth noting that then-49ers spokesman Bob Lange did not give a reason as to why Plummer was fired, and he downplayed the involvement of the interview.

“I don’t know … if anyone in the organization knew of this [interview] before or after he was replaced,” Lange told former San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phil Matier and Andy Ross. “We are not getting into the specifics of why the move was made.”

(The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Plummer, meanwhile, told the Chronicle in 2011 that he believed the sex talk was only part of the problem. The linebacker mostly attributed his pink slip to how he talked about the team at the time. The Niners were coming off a 6-10 season during his last season.

“They talked to me four or five times during the year about being too hard on the team, and they needed to fill the stadium,” he told Matier and Ross. “I don’t think that’s my job as an analyst. My job is to state the facts, and the team was 0-5, and three players had quit, and they had fired their offensive coordinator. And fans had a right to know why.”

KNBR did not respond when SFGATE reached out via email, asking if the relationship between the station and Plummer had been mended. Calls to the station also went unanswered.

Wednesday was not the first time Plummer had returned to KNBR since 2011. A quick search on the station’s social media indicates he appeared on “Murph & Mac” one time back in 2016 ahead of Super Bowl 50, but other guest spots appear few and far between.

Though now that he’s got a star like Kittle paying him respect, that could very well change in the future.