Jim Harbaugh: What Exactly Is His Deal and Where Will He Coach Next?

It’s been a little over 72 hours since the clock at Sun Life Stadium in Miami struck zero and the Stanford University football team won its first BCS bowl game in school history.

Since then, head coach Jim Harbaugh has gone from being a coach with a 29-20 record at Stanford and an Orange Bowl victory to being the most sought-after coaching prospect of the last decade.

Every team with a vacancy on the college level and in the NFL wants him…oh yeah, Stanford does too.

It was clear to many, as his Stanford team gained greater notoriety this year, that the NFL would once again come calling, but no one could have imagined the feeding frenzy that’s ensued since Monday night. 

So what’s a coach worth? In one corner, there’s Harbaugh’s alma mater, the University of Michigan who recently fired their head coach Rich Rodriguez.

The prevailing school of thought is that Harbaugh is not interested in the Michigan job and might still hold a grudge (shocking) from being passed over for the job in the past.

There’s also the fact that he’s taken Michigan to task over their academic leniency towards student-athletes...a stance that works well when you’re at Stanford but not so much when you represent Big Blue. 

The San Francisco 49ers is where everyone had their money all along. It was the right job at the perfect time.

He wouldn’t even have to move out of his current home to take the job and his wife wouldn’t have to endure the prospect of relocating her family, something she’s reportedly not keen on.  

All San Francisco had to do was get its house in order. Fire Mike Singletary, check. Hire a new general manager. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Trent Baalke. Who? Never mind, we want Harbaugh.

He meets with 49ers owner and resident Richie Rich Jed York. The team makes him an offer in the area of $4.5 million a year but fail to get an agreement before word breaks that the Miami Dolphins are interested, and things really start to get weird. 

Yes, those Miami Dolphins. The ones with a coach in Tony Sparano who’s still on the job. Either way, billionaire and Michigan alum, Stephen Ross was on a plane headed for the Bay Area to meet with Harbaugh.

Reports have surfaced in the last 24 hours that Harbaugh is seeking a salary in the $7 million range. That’s right, $7 million for a coach whose career record is 58-27, a career .682 winning percentage.  

While his turnaround at Stanford has been remarkable, I don’t know that it’s worth paying approximately $245,000 for each of the 29 games he’s won during his four year tenure.

I’m all for the market dictating the price for his services but that’d put him in the same pay range as Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll and those two have five championship rings (3 Superbowl and 2 National Championships) between them.

I’m going Squawk Box on this one and telling you this public offering is grossly overpriced. 

At this time it appears that the list of suitors is down to Stanford University bolstered by quarterback Andrew Luck’s return and the San Francisco 49ers who need to make a splash hire for their fans.

And this time, $6 million is the number being tossed around.

This is all the more surprising to me because while Stanford has the second largest endowment of any university or college in the U.S. behind only Harvard, they’ve never really struck me as an institution with questionable stewardship habits when it comes to spending on athletics.

To be quite honest, I doubt that their goal is to gain greater national prominence on the athletic stage so they can attract more applicants. The 49ers, on the other hand, would make Ebenezer Scrooge blush with their spending habits. 

Meanwhile, NFL owners and athletic directors in the Pac-10 are going bat sh*t crazy hoping they don’t all have to renegotiate contracts with the advent of the Harbaugh bump, and so are the members of the media charged with covering all this drama.

Every minute brings another source ready to confirm that his hiring is a done deal, only to be outdone by another reputable source seconds later.

Suffice it to say, no one knows anything, but we can all agree on one thing: we hope this entire saga will end before the weekend.  

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