Jim Harbaugh's glow leads 49ers out of darkness Scott Ostler

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(01-14) 00:44 PST -- We'll call it the Tara VanDerveer Observation. The Stanford women's basketball coach once said, "All the great ones have a screw loose."

It's open to debate whether Jim Harbaugh has earned the "great" label, but he's on that track. When I asked Vernon Davis about Harbaugh, the 49ers' tight end shouted, "He's a crazy (mother-)!"

Harbaugh is at least very different. When he took over at Stanford, he pledged that his team would play with "an enthusiasm unknown to mankind." At Stanford and with the 49ers, he has coached with an enthusiasm unknown to coachkind.

Tom Thomas saw that energy when Harbaugh came to recruit Tom's son, Chase, a blue-chip linebacker. The Thomases entertained dozens of college coaches, but only one coach entertained them.

"He separated himself by miles from everyone else," said Thomas, who described Harbaugh as "Mach-1, hair on fire, very charismatic. ... When he walks into a room, there's a circle of energy radiating out about 30 yards."

Five minutes into his recruiting visit, Harbaugh was rolling on the floor with the family's golden retriever. Asked if he wanted something to drink, Harbaugh said he'd be happy to help himself, and jogged to the fridge.

Harbaugh said, "Chase, let's go see your room," and bounded up the stairs.

Then it was, "Chase, get your basketball, let's go shoot hoops."

Uh-oh, Harbaugh and hoops, that's dangerous territory. Former Stanford offensive lineman Chris Marinelli said Harbaugh will play anyone one-on-one, "and he's not going to let you score. I watched him play an assistant coach. I think the final score was 0-0, with three bloody noses."

Alex Fletcher, a former Stanford center, said Harbaugh made an immediate impression. At the end of the new coach's first practice, the team ran a killer set of five 60-yard sprints. Harbaugh ran 'em all.

"He's the most enthusiastic human being I've ever met, about anything - football, the university, his wife, his family," Marinelli said. "At first, you have trouble believing it."

Harbaugh's energy is a manifestation of his confidence, which overpowers everything, like industrial-strength cologne in an elevator.

"It wasn't his enthusiasm as much as it was his confidence," Fletcher said. "He just reeked of confidence. I don't think he'll ever lose at anything in his life. ... In 2007, we had no business being on the field against USC. He willed us to victory.

"He took a group of Stanford guys and made us believe we were the blue-collar kids. ... It's not that he gets you to drink the Kool-Aid. He drinks the Kool-Aid, too."

So maybe Harbaugh is just a hyper guy, or maybe it's an act?

"I know some people on the outside world would roll their eyes and see this stuff as corny," said Brian Polian, Stanford special teams coordinator (although he's leaving for Texas A&M), "until you're in the room and you feel the sincerity."

It was one thing to convince Stanford students that they're bad-dude street scufflers. But how do you do that in the NFL, where the players are already half-crazed Ninjas?

"I think it's wrong to make the assumption that all NFL players are tough," said Polian, whose father and two brothers have worked extensively in the NFL. "No matter what you say about the NFL, when players sense a coach wants to win as badly as they do, they'll follow that."

The current 13-3 49ers will back Polian's statement.

"He does a great job of focusing on the little details, but at the same time keeping it loose and not allowing his players to get tense about making mistakes," offensive lineman Adam Snyder said, "where in the past we've had coaches that have not done that.

"It's not so much joking around; it's more about forgetting what happened and moving forward. ... He loves the game of football, and I really think he cares about the guys. Everybody on the staff is like that. It leaks down to us and allows us to play our best football."

Harbaugh will take a show-of-hands vote of players on things like travel plans and schedules. He formed a committee of eight players to sound out the team and come to him with suggestions and beefs.

"Not too many coaches do that," said safety Donte Whitner, who played five seasons at Buffalo before signing this year with the 49ers as a free agent. "It's usually cut-and-dried. 'I'm the (boss), this is how it goes.' "

Whitner said Harbaugh still surprises him.

"Coaches tend to disappear. They tend to not be (personally) involved with players as much," Whitner said, noting that Harbaugh sits down with players in the lunch room and jumps around on plane flights to chat with players.

I asked Whitner if he ever thought Harbaugh was weird.

"Yeah," he said, "I always thought it was weird. I always thought it was weird that a lot of head coaches don't really speak to you and don't want to get to know you personally. And when I first got here I thought it was a little weird that he wanted to do that. ... That's why he's won the locker room over, and why he's won the organization and everyone over."

It's too early to proclaim Harbaugh a genius, but the 49ers would be wise to keep the maintenance guy with the screwdriver away from their coach.