It’s moot now because Jim Harbaugh reportedly finally signed a contract extension with Stanford, and the Notre Dame and Kansas jobs have been filled.   But the speculation and/or assumption that Harbaugh was somehow involved in the Notre Dame and Kansas job hunts offered an intriguing sideshow.

Two interesting things occurred during the Harbaugh-Notre Dame-Kansas rumors.

1. Harbaugh has signed the much-delayed contract entension with Stanford, John Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News reported Saturday.  Apparently, the contract was signed awhile ago, and it will be announced in the next few days.   It is a three-year extension that takes Harbaugh’s contract through the 2014 season.  It does not legally prevent Harbaugh from leaving Stanford tomorrow, but it symbolizes a strong commitment virtually every coach would honor for a year.    It is an important accomplishment for  Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby, because his failure to reach an agreement on a contract extension with Cardinal basketball coach Trent Johnson apparently prompted Johnson to look elsewhere, and he eventually took the LSU job.

2. Jim Harbaugh was offered the Kansas job, according to several reports, and it would have paid him something around $2.6 million year.    If that is true, and it’s hard to know for sure whether it is, Harbaugh left a lot of money on the table because he won’t be getting nearly that much at Stanford.

One final thing.   Jim Harbaugh told me three years ago, when he was head coach at the University of San Diego, “I’ve always said my dream was to coach an NFL team to the Super Bowl.”    Stanford, my friends, is not in the NFL.

Three things you should know as background.

1. When a coach says, as a way to quiet rumors, that he has had no contact with any representatives of Coachless University, that means nothing.   Often colleges hire a search firm to feel out prospective coaches for their interest.   Notre Dame apparently hired such a fim, the Parker Group out of Atlanta, and representatives of that organization spoke to Harbaugh about the Notre Dame vacancy, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.   Strictly speaking, that search firm is not a representative of Notre Dame, even though for practical purposes it is, so Harbaugh could say with a straight face that he had no contact with Notre Dame representatives.

2. When a coach says he plans to stay at the school where he is currently the coach, it means nothing.   As Robert Redford said as Bob Woodward in “All the President’s Men” that’s a non-denial denial.   What a coach is “planning” to do may disappear if he gets an attractive offer.  As coaches often say in other matters, plans change.  Beware of coaches bearing the “plan” word.

3. Harbaugh ended every non-denial denial regarding the Notre Dame job by saying “god willing.”  Do those two words create a loophole in the denial, that a lucrative offer elsewhere may be a sign from above that god has changed his will?  Probably not.  As his brother Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh said — and we tend to believe him — it was Jim’s way of saying nobody can say for sure what will happen to him next year or next week.   Perhaps John should be Jim’s mouthpiece.