Jim Harbaugh Helping Change the Definition of Premier College Coaching Jobs

Hello, Bleachers, first time writer here, so go easy on me.

Jim Harbaugh will be the next San Francisco 49ers coach and won’t be coming home to Michigan. The best part of this is he won’t even have to move out of his house.

But an aspect of this story that piqued my interest was the report that while the NFL was Harbaugh’s No. 1 option, he would've stayed at Stanford rather than return to his alma mater if jumping to the next level weren't an option for him.

This story, in addition to Miami hiring Al Golden, could be seen as signaling something of a paradigm shift in college football.

20 years ago or even 10 years ago, if the University of Michigan were interested in hiring the head coach at Stanford, regardless of whether the guy was a Michigan alum or not, the Wolverines’ only concern was whether the guy would trip over the phone in his hurry to accept the job.

The same logic applies to the head coach at Mississippi State if he were to be considered for the Miami Hurricanes job.

But today, if you’re at a BCS Conference school not named Vanderbilt, the possibility of getting to that title game exists. Prior to Harbaugh coming to Stanford, if you asked your typical college football fan what schools would have the most difficulty ever getting to the national championship game, the list would likely include Stanford, along with Northwestern and Vanderbilt.

But Stanford almost did it; a halfway competent second-half performance against Oregon, and they very well might be the ones playing Auburn in the national championship game.

Mississippi State wasn’t quite as close to playing for a national championship. But they still won nine games in the most difficult division and conference in college football and with no real passing game to speak of.

Oh, and all of this was in Dan Mullen’s second season, so he’s winning with mostly his predecessor Sylvester Croom’s players. If Mullen chooses to stay at Mississippi State once he gets his players, and he is recruiting well, there’s no reason to believe that he won’t compete for BCS berths even in the hellacious SEC West.

None of this is to say that the Mississippi State and Stanford jobs are better than the Michigan and Miami jobs, because that’s a false and foolish statement to make. But the former two jobs do have some benefits over the latter two, with the absence of extremely unrealistic fan bases being at the top of the list.

But what has happened is that the perceived quality gap of the jobs has narrowed considerably. Also, if you’re at a BCS Conference school, and you’re really good at what you’re doing, there may not be a ceiling to what you can achieve, even if you’re at a school perceived as second-rate and without a long history of winning.