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These are new days for Stanford Football.

• A legitimate top-five national ranking
• Two consecutive top-two Heisman candidates
• Potential (and likely) BCS Bowl bid
• The truly bizarre sensation of SEC, Big East, Big-12, and other games we used to watch with an independent eye now actually affecting Stanford’s fate

And of course:

• The impending reality of a “Post-Harbaugh” football program.

If you read the news, Jim Harbaugh will be leaving Stanford to go to Michigan, University of Miami, the 49ers (my personal favorite, for obvious reasons), or some other NFL destination. It’s such a point of worry for Stanford fans that even Alvin Rabushka at the Hoover Institution has written a few thoughts on how we might be able to get Harbaugh to stay.

As I noted in my comment on that blog post though, getting Jim Harbaugh to stay at Stanford would take much more than a market-rate salary. Considering it’s questionable whether Stanford would even pay up for that simple prerequisite, the whole campaign feels like an inevitably-lost cause.

Take the simple fact that we Stanford fans (including myself) are so elated to be getting into a BCS Bowl game. That’s to be expected considering I never in my wildest dreams actually thought it would happen. But by definition, that means our program is not consistently competing for the Pac-10, much less the National, Championship. Coaches in the Big Money college sports don’t stay at a school like that.

Now you might say, “But he can be the one to build the Stanford program into that!” That is true. He could stay at Stanford and build a Mike Krzyzewski-like legacy, progressively turning Stanford into a national power on the level of USC, Miami, Michigan, Alabama, Notre Dame. It would take literally decades and he would be a legend for it… If he was able to do it.

But for every Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Izzo, Mark Few, Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, there are many more Tyrone Willinghams. And to be clear, Tyrone Willingham did not capture the level of success or level of interest from other schools/teams that Harbaugh has. But all it took was one.

And if we’re really honest with ourselves, Harbaugh has popped up in enough NFL rumors over the past couple of years, resulting in enough smoke, that there is definitely fire.

That’s not an important point because so many teams are interested (because it only takes one), but rather because it means Harbaugh is interested. And I think every time Harbaugh runs onto the field at Stanford Stadium with a Top 10 team and a 30% filled building, I think he asks himself: “Why isn’t this place filled? A team this good at Michigan/Miami would be selling out a building twice this size.” (As an aside, maybe the fact that basketball stadiums are so much smaller also makes it that much easier for Krzyzewski to stay at Duke.)

So yes, it is technically possible for a coach like Jim Harbaugh to stay at a school like Stanford. It would take a team consistently contending for Pac-10/12 championships, the opportunity to have a legendary legacy, rabid fan support, top facilities, and market-rate compensation. Most of all, it takes the kind of coach who is interested in committing decades to that pursuit and likely not the kind who (understandably) wants to compete at the highest-profile professional level NOW.

And even that might not be enough because, as Stanford fans remember, we thought we used to have all of that with Mike Montgomery (18 seasons!).

And look how that turned out.