Stanford can only limit Harbaugh's quest for a national championship

It is not a matter of if Stanford football coach Jim Harbaugh will leave the Cardinal.
It is a matter of when.
That reality is sad for the few passionate college football fans in the Bay Area who are desperate to see the local media cover college sports like their neighbors in Los Angeles do, but it is the truth nonetheless.
The chances of Stanford winning a national championship at some point in the next thirty years are about as low as seeing an attractive stripper at the Hustler Club in San Francisco, and that's saying something.
All realistic Cardinal fans know this, and while Harbaugh may publicly state that he thinks winning a championship is possible, in private he would acknowledge that doing so at Stanford is a stretch to say the least.
But more importantly, he realizes that the chances of winning a championship at another institution are much higher, and that he has the opportunity to be considered as a favorite for pretty much any division I college football and NFL jobs that open up in the near future.
Collectively the privileged fraternity of college and pro football coaches are like the stock market.
A coach's peak value is high, but there is also no limit to how low their stock can fall and how hungry their boosters can get.
Harbaugh's counterpart in tomorrow's Big Game knows this better than anybody.
Jeff Tedford garnered the same amount of praise that Harbaugh is receiving today back in 2004 when he led the Bears to a 10-2 record and groomed a first-round quarterback in Aaron Rodgers.
Back then reporters and analysts were quick to mention him as a candidate for high-profile college football and NFL jobs that sprang open.
That is not the case today.
He chose to stay at Cal, and is the headmaster of a stagnating program at a school whose administration doesn't value football enough to give him the support that he needs to legitimately compete for a Pac 10 title.
I don't see how that fate would be any different for Harbaugh if he stays at Stanford.
Their athletic department has won 15 consecutive Director's Cups, which is given to the school that is considered to have the best all-around athletic program.
In other words, those trophies mean that Stanford's athletic department wants all sports to do well, and isn't going to sacrifice one or two in order to put its football program in a position to be in the top ten every year.
And the Harvard of the West's admissions standards will never allow for Harbaugh to compete with USC and Oregon in the long-run either.
Harbaugh has experienced recent success in getting high-caliber athletes to come to Stanford, and beating USC by 34 points will help that cause substantially, but it is unlikely that his team's rosters can be as deep as that of the Trojans and Ducks year in and year out when his pool of prospects is limited.
And that would most likely eventually put him in the same position as Tedford; the author of perennial bowl teams, but teams whose amount of consistent success leaves fans wanting more, which is unachievable for schools that don't place football on a pedestal like Florida and USC do.
Cardinal fans still have a lot to be optimistic about though.
It is unlikely that Stanford will be without Harbaugh for at least the next two seasons.
Notre Dame has become a death wish for any coach and I doubt that he'd want that job even if it opened up, as he is the highest definition of a Michigan Man, being one who played for Bo Schembechler (that job won't open up this year, but it might by this time in 2010, and despite his opinionated comments about the school in 2007, I bet that he'd be able to get it).
He is much more likely to take the Bobby Petrino route and ride his star quarterback to a BCS game (which won't happen this year) before leaving for the NFL or a more recognizable college team, with the bowl bid and a rebuilt program serving as justification for his decision.
There are only so many coaches who have a chance to win a national championship or a Super Bowl in their lifetimes.
The 45-year old Harbaugh has been blessed with that chance, and he should take advantage of it.
That means leaving Stanford.