by David Zizmor

ALAMEDA–The University of Michigan has made a definite offer to San Francisco 49ers head coach in the neighborhood of $48 million and the Oakland Raiders are getting ready to make a bid for Harbaugh who has three more games left to coach at the 49ers. If you had to put a percentage on it it’s tough to say which direction he’s going to go.

Here’s the thing with the Raiders and any coach at the Raiders, the Raiders stink and they’ve stunk for a long time. They haven’t been a relevant team in terms of success in the NFL for over a decade now. It’s been frequent poor drafting, it’s been an unorganized front office, it’s an ownership situation that’s muddy.

The location situation (the Coliseum) that’s muddy, there are a lot of uncertainty that involve the Raiders. Frankly we don’t even know if the Raiders are going to be in Oakland in the short future that’s how muddy the situation is. There were rumors as recently as two days ago that the Raiders were going to have their lease end this season and they were going to end up playing at the Rose Bowl in the Southland until a new stadium was figured out for the Raiders.

This is a strange situation for any new coach to walk into and Harbaugh is going to be no different. The fact also that Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie is also on the hot seat and may not survive the off season. There is no way to really know what is going to happen. The Raiders right now are hosting Buffalo who are 2-12 in week 15 this coming Sunday, with Mark Davis the Raiders current owner we know very little about him.

With the late former owner Al Davis we knew plenty about him and his ways of running the Raiders. He was kind of mysterious but we had 40 years of Al Davis to draw upon to figure out what he was going to do. Mark Davis has no clue and were not really sure if McKenzie is going to get fired. It would appear that he should be fired based on the way the team has performed and the way he assembled this current team that has lost 12 games out of their last 14.

Without no one knowing the status of the general manager it’s hard to say what’s going to happen with the coaching situation. There is no reason to think that Raiders head coach Tony Sparano will survive as head coach of the Raiders after this season. He has done an admirable job getting this team to play after McKenzie fired former coach Dennis Allen. Sparano has this team working harder than they did under Allen.

The harder effort also might be from players realizing that their jobs are all on the line and that they have to pick up the pace. From Harbaugh’s prospective he’s got to take a look at he talent on the Raiders and then consider if he would want to join them. The Raiders are a complete rebuilding project, he would keep Derrick Carr who appears to be the real deal at quarterback. It’s not known if Carr is ever going to be like a Tom Brady or Peyton Manning but he might be one of the reasons why Harbaugh may want to coach in Oakland.

Daivd Zizmor covers the NFL for http://www.sportsradioservice.com