Coach shopping season, like holiday shopping season, arrives earlier every year.
We have all complained about Christmas decorations in the mall on Labor Day, even you 20-somethings who harken back to the days when Christmas began right after Halloween. But premature coaching gossip is doing just as much to ruin our holiday cheer.
Brady Hoke's firing from Michigan provided a fresh shipment of Jim Harbaugh rumors, as if we did not have enough of that cordwood stacked beside the fireplace to last through the winter. Florida's wide wishful-thinking dragnet snared Chip Kelly and Josh McDaniels in its rumor-mongering mesh before the university found a more mundane solution. The usual coach-on-the-hot-seat boilerplate is already making the NFL rounds, with stereophonic New York collapses ranking this year's amplifiers well past 11. When it comes to rampant coaching job speculation, early December is the new early January.
One-fourth of the NFL season is still left to play. Not a single team has clinched a playoff berth. The college conference championships have not yet happened, let alone the bowls. Can we play a little more football before we open the swap meet?America's Harbaugh-Michigan 'shippers have always been more interested in seeing Harbaugh take over in Ann Arbor than Harbaugh, the University of Michigan or the San Francisco 49ers have been. This match made in heaven is based on the fact that Harbaugh played quarterback at Michigan and...that's it, really. Harbaugh is from Ohio, has close ties to Indiana after quarterbacking the Indianapolis Colts for several seasons and has coached exclusively on the West Coast since taking an assistantship with the Raiders in 2002. The alleged MichiBaugh romance is a classic example of insert-alumnus-A-into-likely-vacancy-B blogosphere logic, ignoring minor details like the fact that NFL coaches with 43-16-1 records don't suddenly decide to drop to a lower competition level.
Coaches with 43-16-1 records don't usually hit the open market, either, but circumstances are unique in this case. The rift between Harbaugh and the 49ers is such common knowledge that the team media guide should have a cover photo of Harbaugh and general manager Trent Baalke shaking fists at each other. The team would hire a media expert with the title "Public Relations Assistant Director of Yes, We're Still Fighting" if Fox Sports' Jay Glazer was not doing such an excellent job for free. Baalke's daughter even got in the act by tweeting (then deleting) that coordinator Greg Roman should be fired on Thanksgiving night. At least she stopped short of demanding Harbaugh's head on a silver platter. There's nothing like input from the boss' daughter to make an NFL franchise sound like a muffler dealership.
Glazer reported last week that the 49ers would try to trade Harbaugh, a scenario roughly as plausible as trying to hypnotize the coach to do Baalke's bidding. Someone in the organization has certainly floated the trade idea—the 49ers' relationship with their coach is a loose tooth they cannot stop fiddling with. But there's a big difference between "trying to trade" someone and successfully trading him, particularly if that someone is a head coach. Logistically, trading Harbaugh will be about as easy as knocking him unconscious in a hotel room and stealing his kidney.
A Harbaugh trade would require a willing Harbaugh: Putting a non-consenting Harbaugh in charge of your franchise would be like ordering Alec Guinness to build The Bridge on the River Kwai. Teams willing to enter into such an arrangement would be the least likely teams to coerce the coach into the kind of sign-and-trade deal necessary to make an arrangement feasible.
Harbaugh has one year left on his 49ers contract, and he is not a running back who has to earn all the money he can before he gets washed up at age 26. He could "retire" in lieu of any trade to an undesirable franchise, watch the broadcast networks paratroop into his driveway in search of pregame-show catnip, then take his pick of coaching jobs after his obligations expire. Making the 49ers and their trade partners look ridiculous in the process would be an added bonus.
The Oakland Raiders and New York Jets are the two teams reportedly dysfunctional enough to attempt to acquire a coach without going through the messy "meeting him" or "seeing if he is willing" stages. That tells you most of what you need to know about the trade possibilities.
Source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2288335-france-should-grant-legend-thierry-henry-a-farewell-appearance
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