The San Francisco 49ers are one of five teams the NFL can force to participate in Hard Knocks, the documentary-style sports series produced by HBO.
The 49ers have made it clear on numerous occasions that they would prefer not to have their training camp and preseason lives broadcast to the masses outside of what the team chooses to show within its own online series, Brick by Brick.
In case the 49ers' feelings about Hard Knocks were unclear, head coach Kyle Shanahan shared his thoughts about the show on Monday when asked about his stance on participating.
"It's a hard, hard, bad stance on Hard Knocks. You would see the worst entertainment possible by me," Shanahan promised.
And that was that -- until team president Al Guido joined 95.7 The Game on Thursday afternoon and was asked about the topic. He even shared Shanahan's reasoning for wanting to stay clear.
"Kyle was pretty straightforward on the Hard Knocks comment," Guido said. "Listen, we know that they can select us and frankly, we probably don't have a choice. There's a lot of things behind the scenes I think that Kyle feels like should not be shared.
"I don't mind sharing this one. I think Kyle struggles with cutting guys on camera. He feels like that's very personal. These guys are fighting for their careers, and lives, and how much it means to be an NFL player. To commercialize that, he's never been a big fan of that.
"I've let the NFL know our stance on that front. I never got a chance to obviously play in the NFL. I played small DIII football. I can't imagine working my tail off, going through that process, and having that be necessarily put on video.
"Look, if they select us, we'll work through them, but we've let our feelings be known to the NFL and the powers that be around how we feel about certain elements of the show."
The other NFL teams eligible to be on Hard Knocks are the Detroit Lions, New York Giants, Oakland Raiders, and Washington Redskins. The league can force any team to participate if it has not been on the show in the last 10 years, hasn't made the playoffs during the previous two seasons, and doesn't have a new head coach.
You can listen to the entire conversation with Guido below.
