49ers' delicate dance with Jim Harbaugh put into spotlight

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The past few days have been all about Jim Harbaugh. He has trumped Johnny Football, Vladimir Putin, Jason Collins and even Tonya-and-Nancy.

Which is just the way he likes it. Because, as Harbaugh knows, you can't spell, "the team, the team, the team," without "me, me, me."

The Pro Football Talk report that seemed crazyFriday - that the Cleveland Browns explored trade talks with the 49ers for Harbaugh - became decidedly less crazy as the hours passed. Flat denials grew into significant wiggle room over the weekend. Browns owner Jimmy Haslam confirmed that the teams had talks about Harbaugh. Jed York, who denied the report Friday on Twitter, told Sports Illustrated's Peter King that, "The Browns reached out to me, and we had no interest in pursuing it."

Sources told me the entire interaction between the 49ers and Browns lasted all of 15 minutes.

Smoke has been billowing around the issue of Harbaugh's future for a while, and now we're stumbling right into the fire pit. There's trouble in what 49ers fans would love to believe is paradise.

Anyone who is even remotely shocked that (a) there might be friction between Harbaugh and other big dogs in the 49ers' organization, or (b) a head coach is looking to gain leverage and power, simply hasn't been paying close attention to the story of James Joseph Harbaugh.

Harbaugh likes power - and he doesn't have as much as he wants with the 49ers. He likes recognition. He likes money. And he likes the concept that he's more important to the 49ers than any other single factor.

On that last point, he's dead right. And that's why York, who consistently has said that he wants Harbaugh to be his coach for a long time, needs to get a deal in place that will put these rumors to bed for at least a few years while the 49ers' window of opportunity is still open.

Reports of trade talks involving Jim Harbaugh spotlight the fragile relationship between the 49ers and their coach. Reports of trade talks involving Jim Harbaugh spotlight the fragile relationship between the 49ers and their coach. Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Photo: Brant Ward, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close 49ers' delicate dance with Jim Harbaugh put into spotlight 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

Before Dolphins owner Steve Ross decides that he can't put up with his doofus, head-in-the-sand head coach, Joe Philbin, and that Harbaugh is worth $10 million a year. Before another draft causes potential finger-pointing over mistakes like A.J. Jenkins. Before another season starts with all the focus on Harbaugh's longevity and his relationship with Trent Baalke instead of on Colin Kaepernick's development.

Harbaugh is a pain. He is combustible and competitive. He hasn't seemed destined for a long tenure with the 49ers. A cozy working relationship between him and the tightly wound Baalke always seemed somewhat implausible. The fact that he might have little time for 49ers President Paraag Marathe - as recently reported - or even occasionally his boss, young York, is believable.

Harbaugh has done things that infuriate the 49ers. Promising his players he'd have their back in contract discussions. The mishandling of Aldon Smith's situation, amid DUI and gun charges, was pure Harbaugh. Several people in the organization were extremely embarrassed about the way that unfolded.

But, good football coaches are usually pains in the rear. And Harbaugh is not merely good. He's a great football coach.

He's the reason the 49ers have gone from league laughingstock to one of the top two or three teams in the NFL. The reason that the York family has credibility after years of being considered a complete embarrassment. The reason that, after a quarter century of searching, the 49ers have been able to get the corporate world to buy into their fledgling stadium.

If the 49ers want to play hardball with Harbaugh, and risk losing him, they're making a big mistake. The York family couldn't figure out how to replace even Steve Mariucci, a far less accomplished coach, so there's little reason to think the Yorks simply can plug in a replacement for Harbaugh.

When front offices get involved in ego tiffs with good coaches, the team is the one that loses. The Raiders were losers after they traded Jon Gruden. The Cowboys were losers when Jerry Jones thought he was more important than Jimmy Johnson.

Harbaugh has two years left on a contract that pays him $5 million a year. Maybe he's not worth as much as Sean Payton, the league's highest-paid coach who has won a Super Bowl, but Harbaugh is worth more in the current NFL marketplace than he's making. He hasn't won a Super Bowl - and his team wasn't as good in 2013 as it was in 2012 - but he has rescued the 49ers' reputation and been to three straight conference-championship games. Yet he isn't among the top 10 highest-paid coaches in the NFL. He makes the same as Dallas' Jason Garrett, less than the Eagles' Chip Kelly and is the third-highest-paid coach in his division.

Neither Baalke nor Harbaugh is popular in NFL circles, which is why this story has legs. The story helps the Browns because they appeared to be attempting competency, as opposed to spontaneously combusting, which is what they usually do. Harbaugh would have become the biggest thing in Cleveland, even bigger than Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" blue jeans at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. The story gives Harbaugh leverage because now everybody in the NFL is discussing his worth; he dominated talk at the NFL's biggest corporate get-together.

But the story doesn't help the 49ers, not in any way. They're moving into a stadium that's going to price out a lot of their fans. York might want to side with his general manager in a conflict, but the 49ers are coming off a season that wasn't flattering to Baalke, who - as much as anyone - lost the competition with the Seattle Seahawks. York hasn't been able to get an extension done with Harbaugh, even though a coach's salary should be doable, exempt from the salary cap. The 49ers have several key players they need to extend, and their head coach is giving them a headache.

The 49ers have a window of opportunity. A good team. A great coach. And a smart, young boss in York who has to figure out how to make this complicated puzzle work.