Michigan is going to hire a new athletic director sometime this month and the checklist of things to do is pretty brief:

1. Fire the current football coach.

2. Hire the new football coach.

View photos Bob Stoops celebrates during OU's win over Iowa State last week. (USA TODAY Sports) More

The odds of San Francisco 49ers coach, and Michigan alum, Jim Harbaugh returning to college look longer each week. The perception around the NFL is that if he's let go by San Francisco, a shot with another franchise (New York Jets? Oakland? Miami? A new L.A. team?), featuring more control and money, seems far more likely.

If so, Michigan should try to convince Bob Stoops not just how he'd be great for Michigan, but how Michigan would be great for him.

Stoops isn't looking for a job, of course. He's in his 16th season at Oklahoma, works for an athletic director and a school president who are trusted confidants and makes $5.25 million a year. He's built a legacy. He's synonymous with the program. He's under no pressure – outside of the depths of message board frustration.

Michigan, which will inevitably can Brady Hoke, should recruit Stoops anyway. It's not that the Wolverines are necessarily a better job or a better fit, it's that they are a different job and a different fit.

Stoops is 54 years old and has spent his entire head coaching career at OU. If he is open to a new challenge and a fresh start then there may never be a better time or place than Ann Arbor right now, an elite program in desperate need of a legitimate winner.

Stoops' 15th-ranked Sooners host No. 12 Baylor Saturday in what once looked like it would be the de facto Big 12 championship game. Instead, Kansas State-TCU is overshadowing it, two teams OU lost to by one and four points, respectively.

It's sort of the perfect example of where Oklahoma football is – damn good, but maybe not damn good enough for a place (and a coach) that strives for national titles.

View photos Brady Hoke's Wolverines are 4-5 this season. (USA TODAY Sports) More

Stoops has won more than 80 percent of his games at OU, delivering a steady diet of 11 and 2's, and 10 and 3's, with top-15, even top-five finishes. The problem, if you want to categorize it as that, is he hasn't won a national title since his second season, way back in 2000.

Billy Tubbs, the old Oklahoma basketball coach, used to say a coach should move to a new school every seven or eight years because after that you make no more fans; the ones you had just grow sick of you. Tubbs said he learned that at OU, where he coached 14 seasons, the last few of which were kind of miserable.

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