I guess we should talk about this. Rumors starting swirling last week that the Raiders were going to offer Jim Harbaugh uncanny money to take over in Las Vegas, and that Jim is going to hear them out. People keep asking me what I’ve heard, and I’ve pointed them to the premium message boards because I’m not an insider. Other than some peripheral people who tell me things, I know dickety doo except what goes out in public, or what I get from 247, On3, and Rivals. If you want insider information you should pay the insiders for that.

Those insiders have done their best to keep up, but the list of sources who know anything here is small enough that real information is scarce. Both Sam Webb of The Michigan Insider/247 and Chris Balas from The Wolverine/On3 have reported that Raiders interest is real, and also that Michigan has a new offer on the table that rewards Harbaugh for last year’s turnaround and increases the assistant pool. Presumably there’s at least enough to bump up some of the young assistants on prove-it contracts and still have enough to play the field for a Nua replacement. The insiders are also convinced that a new contract will come with promises to manifestly change Michigan’s approach regarding changes in the competitive environment, which various people close to Harbaugh have suggested are more important than his own paycheck.

Harbaugh isn’t talking, whomever he’s talking to in Las Vegas isn’t talking, and what we’re getting are reflections of what he’s said to his staff, what people who know him well think, and then a lot of dubious third-hand stuff from a guy who knows a guy who thinks he knows a thing that he doesn’t really.

The latest from Sam Webb($) is that Harbaugh hasn’t told Michigan what he’s doing yet, but hasn’t stopped doing his job. Previous updates from Sam said Michigan is going to have to wait him out($), and that Harbaugh intends to listen($) to what the NFL has to offer. Balas has been tracking the ups and downs($) that staff inside the building have gone through. There are many interesting details about those points behind the paywalls. Most of the rest of the insider information matches what John U. Bacon et al. are getting from people they talk to, which is that money (for himself) isn’t what Harbaugh cares about.

That’s the end of information. Let’s speculate what it all means.

[After the JUMP: Live turkeys vs jive ones]

Don’t we get this turkey jive every year?

Rival coaches, one in particular, have been trying to use “He’s going to the NFL” against Michigan in every offseason that they couldn’t sell “He’s going to be fired.” At the same time NFL reporters and the people who talk to them (mostly agents) are convinced that nobody who could be in the NFL would choose not to be. This thinking is so pervasive, the League cycles through coaches so quickly, the list of coaches who’ve taken teams to the Super Bowl is so small, and Harbaugh is so well-known, that there’s never a shortage of jobs that someone is willing to put his name out for. It took only minutes after Miami fired Flores for people to start speculating Harbaugh was taking his place. We kept the “Oakland is Still in Play” t-shirt in the MGoStore for three years because of it.

Sorting through the NFL insiders who don’t just regurgitate what their sources feed them, Las Vegas is the only serious threat. As far as I know, Harbaugh’s nostalgia with the Bears is far weaker than are his personal tethers to Michigan, and if Stephen Ross pulled the trigger on Flores, it was from internal strife over Tua, not because he had Harbaugh on the hook. Ross said today that he's not targeting Harbaugh.

So why is ‘Oakland’ in play now?

Raiders’ owner Mark Davis is a friend of Harbaugh’s, going back to when Al Davis gave Jim his first coaching job. Davis is also a guy known to make bold and decisive moves. Hiring Jon Gruden was a bold move, as was dropping Gruden (who technically resigned) when an NFL investigation into workplace misconduct in the Washington organization turned up Gruden’s gross attitudes in work emails. People who cover the NFL don’t bet against Mark Davis when he wants something, though he doesn’t (stadium in Oakland, moving to LA) always get what he wants.

As best as I can tell, rumors that the Raiders were going to make Harbaugh the highest-paid coach in football are coming from the many objects that orbit Davis, and thus sus. The story about Harbaugh skipping a contract meeting with Michigan is bunk from Chat Sports, whose business model is to fill information vacuums with made-up stories. They’re far from the only bad actors trying to send Michigan fans into a panic with B.S. In times like these, your human brain is expected to do things it wasn't made for, like spotting the difference between a Twitter checkmark and the Heart of Te Fiti after your heart has stopped.

I know who you are. You know who you are.

What I do find plausible is that Mark Davis indicated to Harbaugh that they’ll make him a competitive offer and name him Imperator Footballius for life plus two weeks. I would believe a lot of teams with less direct connections to Harbaugh have made similar enquiries over the years. The difference between those and this is Harbaugh is going to listen.

Why is it dragging out?

The most serious evidence that Harbaugh wants to hear what the NFL has to offer is that he’s waiting until they can make one. The Raiders made the playoffs last night (by the skin of their teeth) with an interim coach who’s done a pretty good job. In order to move on Harbaugh now, Las Vegas would have to undercut Rich Bisaccia during a playoff run, then go through a public process that includes meeting with ethnic-minority candidates. While a historically progressive franchise on that front (there’s a reason the Davises are Known Friends and Trusted Agents), teams largely pay lip service to the Rooney Rule when they’re zeroed in on one candidate from the start. That does not get them out of the process, however, which means Harbaugh can’t know what the Raiders are willing to offer yet.

The way this played out—the timing of the Raiders interest, the reporting last week of the seriousness of Jim’s intent to listen to them, and then making us all wait over the weekend—makes sense if the Raiders intended to move on Bisaccia if he didn’t make the playoffs. It’s also possible that Harbaugh wanted to know his value, but wasn’t so intent on leaving Michigan that he’s going to wait out the playoffs in this same limbo.

Why is Harbaugh going to listen now? 

Here’s where we’re getting into levels of speculation, not fact. What we know is Harbaugh took a significant pay cut last year after going 2-4. If you recall how that went down, we were twisting in the wind all through Christmas and January last year as well, and Harbaugh’s extension wasn’t signed until after the NFL coaching carousel came to a stop. Michigan certainly did not act like a school that had to get out in front of NFL interest by locking up their head coach. More like they put him on waivers and nobody bit.

While Warde was praised for successfully hedging on Harbaugh, Harbaugh ate a contract that said “We need to be able to pay you half as much and fire you if you guys suck again this year.” I am sure there were plenty of people at Michigan—by which I mean regents, the president, big-time donors, etc.—who wanted to move on, possibly to the extent that Warde had to put his own neck on the chopping block to keep Jim’s off of it.

If something changed in Harbaugh regarding whether he would entertain NFL interest, it almost certainly happened a year ago. The money said one thing, but the way that went down also must have changed the power dynamic.

We all took it for granted that it was Harbaugh who brought in three old Carr guys—a faction that he didn’t get along with in the past—plus Clinkscale, and promoted Sherrone Moore for jobs that used to be held by old football guys or old Harbaugh guys. Credit for those decisions has gone to Harbaugh, who was named the National (but not Big Ten) Coach of the Year in large part for his Beilein-esque staff makeover. Macdonald, the whiz kid gifted from brother John, was clearly a Harbaugh guy, and Helow came as a Macdonald associate. But Mike Hart, Ron Bellamy, and Courtney Morgan were successful program alumni who might have answered the call home from any coach of Michigan. Clinkscale, hired after vagabond Mo Linguist got a head coaching opportunity in March, doesn’t have a Michigan degree, but he came with deep connections in the state of Michigan, and Detroit in particular. Sherrone Moore, promoted from TE coach to OL coach when old school football guy Ed Warinner was put out to pasture, was another guy with important in-state recruiting ties.

Unquestionably, these hires worked out, and chances are good that at least one of them will have Harbaugh’s current job one day. It’s also possible that the football coach who held onto Tim Drevno and Pep Hamilton beyond their sell-by dates learned from his own mistakes and came up with the youth movement on his own. But I don’t know that; it could have been Warde Manuel, who put young people in important positions at Buffalo and Connecticut, encouraged this new direction. The difference we can tell is that when those decisions were made, Harbaugh wasn't in a position to ignore his council like he might have been in the past.

Ultimately, Harbaugh’s incentive-laded 2021 restructuring paid him out as well as his old contract would have for beating Ohio State, winning the Big Ten, and making the playoffs. Harbaugh then turned around and passed all those bonuses right back to athletic department employees who took a hit during the pandemic cutbacks. I assume, based on the timing of that announcement, that part of the reason he did that was to put himself in contrast to James Franklin and Mel Tucker*, who parlayed supposed interest from LSU/USC into huge deals for themselves last November. That’s a potential window into Harbaugh’s priorities, in that he seems to care very much about how he’s seen among his peers, and pays enough attention to such things to assume that others are doing the same. It’s also more evidence to back up the insiders’ claims that Harbaugh isn’t about the money.

I think they’re right, but I also think Harbaugh cares about respect and being wanted. We know from Bacon’s book that part of the reason Jim left the 49ers after 2014 to coach his alma mater was that owner Jed York and Trent Baalke were playing power games. Their side of the story found a ready ear in the NFL media, and their talking points—“He rubs people the wrong way!”—have never gone away. Doubtlessly, Michigan’s leadership isn’t comparable to the People in Charge of Things in San Francisco when that went down. Doubtlessly, Harbaugh felt less like the toast of our town when a substantial portion of the fanbase was sharing Soup memes. Presumably, being put in a position where he had to share power with the Witan after coming in dictating the shade of yellow changed Harbaugh’s sense of how committed to him Michigan really was.

I am comfortable imagining last year’s negotiations as logical and necessary, of seeing the changes made in the program as evidently positive, and understanding that Harbaugh got a great big dose of de-recruiting in the course of all that. He’s a great football coach; how many of those do you know who don’t possess great egos?

Again, I don’t know what’s going on. If I had to guess what’s changed between “Gobble gobble” and “He’s going to listen,” it was probably a lot of things—Michigan’s NIL approach, the frustration of dealing with Michigan’s pedantic admissions office that prevents Michigan from accessing most of the transfer market, the fallout from Dr. Anderson’s scandal and what that’s done to Bo’s legacy. But first on the list had to be January 2021.

* [MSU didn’t even get a better buyout into Tucker’s renegotiation, which tells you Mel was happy to work for $100 million in East Lansing, but he'd rather be making $100 million somewhere else.]

Are there specific sticking points that Michigan won’t budge on?

This is a question I’ve been getting a lot, but again I have to point you to insiders unless you like guesses. I think it’s clear that the frustrations of the modern college competitive environment, and Michigan’s dilly-dally toe-dipping approach to these things while still demanding national relevance, make the Michigan job less plum than some other posts. Even as Michigan adjusts, other schools are going to adjust faster. We clutch our pearls and pretend it’s wrong that Michigan State can take every transfer, or that Texas A&M coaches can direct oil money boosters to the “NIL” accounts of their favorite prospects. Except in certain individual circumstances, I find no moral argument against transfers and paying players. Ethical concerns abound, but we’re talking about an NCAA that has been toothless since it was formed, and barely exists today except to coordinate TV deals, tweak rules, and operate lucrative tournaments.

We’re also talking about a job that’s had these same headaches—to varying degrees—since establishment poster boy Fritz Crisler “cleaned up” the Sabanesque elements of the Yost-Kipke regime. Only in the last decade have Michigan fans begun to seriously question whether Crisler's way (aka "the Michigan way" to everyone younger than Craig Ross), is right.

Harbaugh has consistently been on the side of liberalization, siding with the players on their right to profit from their name and image likeness (NIL) rights, and recommending the one-time transfer rule that’s now been made fact. He’s benefited from those stances with players and parents, even if the national press is loathe to credit him for it. But he’s also been hurt by it. Michigan can’t get transfers past admissions unless they’re early in their football careers or already graduated (Michigan’s grad schools being much more pliable). And by all accounts, Michigan’s been very slow to adjust to a new reality where schools that were dropping wagonloads of bag before are now driving trucks through “NIL.”

I don’t think that Michigan Admissions are going to be moved by any football coach, though I would argue that easing transfer restrictions would be good academic policy.

One sticking point that’s been brought up is use of Michigan’s licensing, specifically the Block M, by the players, which would of course increase their value to real NIL opportunities. M-Den does sell official jerseys, but by player accounts the school has been protective of The Brand. It’s my sense that a compromise can be reached, and fans don’t need to butt in unless one side is being obviously unreasonable. The school could have real concerns about using its imagery with gambling sponsors, which is where a lot of the real NIL stuff is coming from, for example. Working through these differences could be part of the coaching negotiations, but I’m not comfortable taking a side without understanding the details.

This is all to say that while these are probably big concerns of the football coach, they’re probably not going to hash them all out over the coach’s renegotiation table. If Harbaugh is concerned that Michigan will struggle more with a Michigan State that can replace players faster, or an Ohio State with no limits on paying players, that’s valid, but not exactly new. I think Michigan is going to change at their own pace, which pace will keep them in that Lloyd Zone where we can still compete but also maintain that 90th percentile threshold of cleanliness our 90% unhypocritical brand of sanctimony demands.

Here I’ve heard a little more than diddly doo. Insiders seem to agree that the program is coming around on Michigan’s approach to the realities of the new competitive environment with regards to “NIL.” The Harbaugh situation, if it moved the needle at all, may have only done so barely; shifting fan sentiment, and the activism of players like Hunter Reynolds last year, have been more prevalent factors. I know there are some very loyal and very successful program alumni from multiple generations who have been separately pushing for that for some time, and preparing to move once they know it’s not going to cause major issues with the program. State law is going to dictate what can and can’t be done. Everyone says we’re not going to be Texas A&M.

I don't buy the line of thinking that Georgia's talent was a wake-up call for Harbaugh. He has played and coached in the NFL, and coached against Bosas and Micah Parsons, not to mention the guys USC had under Pete Carroll. He's been deeply involved in the recruitments of Rashan Gary, Najee Harris, and Walter Nolen, recruits against Kirby Smart all the time, and his top assistant came from Bama. What do you think Harbaugh didn't know? 

One thing I do believe—and here I’m back to conjecture not facts—is that Harbaugh knew what he was doing. There are things people around a coach usually say when it’s time to Pay the Coach. When rumors popped that Harbaugh was going to listen to an NFL offer, people who know Harbaugh were immediately talking about things Michigan needs to do to take care of their players like other teams’ players get taken care of. It could be a coincidence, hobby horse, or opportunism. But if there’s one observation you can make about Jim Harbaugh after seven years of covering him as head coach of Michigan, if he was going to use NFL interest as leverage for something, it’s wouldn’t be for money for himself, and he would want people to figure that out.

Is Harbaugh staying or going?

The tenor lately says he’s staying, probably with a new contract with money for assistants on the tender, and less pressure on his tether. I think the Raiders interest was real, that Michigan had to definitively demonstrate that they want Harbaugh as much as we ever did, and that Michigan has done its demonstrating. If this drags out until the Raiders’ season is over and their interim coach is let go, worry. If there’s impending Harbaugh news today or tomorrow, we’re going to be fending off jive turkeys for many years yet. I would put my crystal ball on Michigan, but in case it wasn’t clear already, I don’t have one.