FanHouse JimHarbaugh

NFL Coaches Fight Club: the Tournament. Because we have nothing better to do than predict what might happen if head coaches started punching each other in the face.

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LOS ANGELES -- The same guy who led Michigan to the No. 2 ranking in 1985 as a quarterback and nearly brought the Indianapolis Colts to the Super Bowl a decade later has that same fervor in rebuilding the Stanford football program.

LOS ANGELES -- USC was picked to win the Pac-10 football title for the seventh consecutive year by the media, and yet the coaches from all nine competitors -- including Arizona's Mike Stoops (right) and even USC coach Pete Carroll -- touched on the uncertainty of the Trojans this season.

USC received 28 of the 32 votes with California receiving three while third-place Oregon collected one vote. The Trojans will be breaking in a new quarterback and several new defenders since 11 players were taken in the NFL Draft. Perhaps this is the year another school emerges and takes the crown out of Los Angeles, but they approached Thursday precariously and with respect. There were no declarations that USC is going down or the reign is over -- not even from UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel.

Recently, Stanford University unveiled its imaginative new slogan for the upcoming football season. Are you ready? Hold your breath. It's astounding, it's going to rock your world. "We work."

That's it.

The sum total of Stanford's distilled brilliance, the essence of sports. Shakespeare said, "Brevity is the soul of wit," so somewhere he's laughing. Everyone else? They want the athletic department to get a refund check.

Jerry Jones -- if the rumors are true -- made a serious karmic error by petitioning the NFL to schedule the Baltimore Ravens as the final opponent for the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium. Sure, at the time the Ravens had a rookie head coach and a rookie quarterback, were coming off a disappointing season, and looked totally ripe for the picking at the hands of the unstoppable Cowboy juggernaut.

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. But, as it turns out, the Ravens did get a whiff of what Jerry was up to, as Willis McGahee explained to me in an interview yesterday, and Jim Harbaugh used it for motivation.

Yeah our coach told us about ... you know they find out about the schedules in January, and you know, they wanted to schedule us for the final game in Texas Stadium, and our coach gave us a speech right before our meeting was over on Friday night ... and we knew it wasn't going to be no easy walk through for us or for them either.

So, yeah. That's pretty freaking awkward. And it goes to show just how lacking in humility and tact the Cowboys' owner can be at times -- he literally told the NFL, "I want to whip these guys silly as the last big fireworks show in Texas Stadium" (presumably because they were the only team to never play there?)

Obviously it's was an action that backfired heavily on him, but then again, most bulletin board material ends up that way.

Raise your hand if you didn't see this one coming. So, yesterday, I talked about how Raiders coach Tom Cable, presumably unhappy with his team not scoring any points, decided to take away offensive coordinator Greg Knapp's ability to call plays.

Well, as it turns out, the story was only half-right. It's true Knapp is no longer able to call plays, which is probably a good thing based on recent results, but it wasn't Cable who stripped him of the ability.

It was Al Davis! From Nancy Gay of the San Francisco Chronicle:

"Knapp just happened to be the next in line to be a scapegoat," said one source, speaking on the condition of anonymity but eager to clarify who stripped the play-calling duties from the offensive coordinator. Under Davis' orders, Knapp had been calling plays since shortly before head coach Lane Kiffin was dismissed Sept. 30.

Oh, Al. Everything else remains the same, of course, deck chairs and what not. And I feel the need to point it out again, but, Jim Harbaugh ... stay away! Far away!

When your team has scored 16 points in its previous three games, I suppose you have to do something different to light a fire under your players. And that's exactly what Oakland head coach Tom Cable has done, as he's stripped offensive coordinator Greg Knapp of his play calling duties. Well, that's certainly something, but how much it will help remains to be seen.

I believe this is where you can insert some comment about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

From Steve Corkran of the Oakland Tribune (via MDS at PFT):

Knapp was stripped of his play-calling responsibility last week and told that he won't be used in that capacity for the rest of the season, a person in the front office said Monday. Raiders coach Tom Cable presumably is in charge of the play-calling. However, he made no mention of the switch at any point last week, after Sunday's game against the Carolina Panthers or in his weekly news conference Monday.

This sounds about right: the Raiders, in releasing DeAngelo Hall earlier this week, not only burned through $8 million for eight games of substandard cornerback play, but also managed to make the Redskins seem like a model franchise when it comes to making player personnel decisions.

Two years ago, Bill Belichick duped Oakland into sending Randy Moss to New England for a fourth-round pick, and now Washington not only signed Hall to a relatively affordable $500,000, one-year deal, but they somehow got a 2008 Al Davis second-round pick out of it.

It's complicated, I know, but NFL.com's Adam Schefter explains:

If you're looking for an early favorite to take over that highly coveted position of Oakland Raiders head coach in 2009, Tim Kawakami is willing to give you a name to consider: current Stanford coach, captain comeback himself, Jim Harbaugh. And get this, Harbaugh is a huge Al Davis fan.

Betcha didn't see that coming. Or maybe you did, I don't know. It's hard to tell with the Raiders these days. Anyway, from Kawakami's Talking Points blog at the Mercury News:

Stanford Coach Jim Harbaugh is guaranteed a very long and warm talk with Al Davis–and probably an offer to become the next Raiders coach–this December or January. My source, who has been very reliable in the past and yesterday repeated the Harbaugh-Raiders talk I've heard for almost a year now, only had one caveat: "Everybody knows Al loves Harbaugh, but why would Harbaugh want that job? He could wait at Stanford a little longer and get a real job." But here's where I can add: Harbaugh loves Al. That's what makes this magic.

I suppose this is good news for Davis, as there is, apparently, somebody else out there willing to work for him and put up with his iron-fist rule. Unless Davis, as Kawakami jokes -- I hope he's joking -- cans the Harbaugh idea because his name was revealed as a favorite. He's not that crazy, is he? Maybe he'll be able to do something with those busts, JaMarcus Russell and Darren McFadden.

Prop Bets for the College Football Junkie is a weekly post that cares not for your silly point spreads. If you have the money and the gumption, we'll lay down a weekly gauntlet of propositions that'll take you from the penthouse to the outhouse faster than you can guess the number of times Lee Corso will say "not so fast my friend." As always, this is for entertainment purposes only.

$ With the big news of the week being the firing of Tommy Bowden at Clemson, the crew at ESPN will be sure to debate the thought process at Clemson. Lou Holtz will most certainly defend Bowden and Mark May will defend the administration. So we give you a straight up bet that Holtz will forget the camera is still rolling again this week and have some less than flattering words for Clemson. What the heck, +/-5 on the number of times he says "damn."

$ Jim Harbaugh and Rick Neuheisel are both known for taking jabs at opposing teams and coaches in the week leading up to the game. As both have been quiet this week, we're sure they are saving everything for the post game handshake when Stanford plays at UCLA. The conversation will most certainly revolve around the post-game speech Neuheisel gave after the Tennessee game. Straight up, one of two thing will be said depending on the outcome of the game. Neuheisel-"Jim, I'd love to stand here and talk, but I've got a speech to give. Better luck next year, loser." Or, Harbaugh-"Doesn't look like anyone stuck around for your speech tonight. You guys got any games left on the schedule you think you can win?"

$ When Mississippi State travels to Tennessee, we'll be seeing the 103rd and 104th worst offenses in the country. So we'll put the over and under on the closeups of each team's offensive coordinator at +/-10. Because if someone is going to go, these guys are going to get the boot first.