Jim Harbaugh is very, probably, supposedly going to leave Stanford to become the next Michigan coach. This has been speculated in the media and online for months, but the discussion has accelerated in recent weeks/days for a few reasons:

1) NFL teams are supposedly reaching out to Harbaugh’s agent to gauge his interest in NFL jobs (San Francisco? Miami? Carolina?), and the takeaway from some NFL reporters seems to be that he’s going to Michigan
2) Harbaugh hasn’t signed his extension at Stanford and has been coy about what the holdup is
3) Harbaugh is a “Michigan Man.” He has worked wonders at never-any-good Stanford. If he were to stick around Palo Alto, he’d have to rebuild around a new QB (nobody really thinks Andrew Luck is staying, right?)
4) Michigan’s coach, Rich Rodriguez, is universally loathed. Although he has shown improvement in each of his three years (3-9, 5-7, 7-5), the NCAA rules violations and player issues/deflections have hampered any progress.

We hear the decision to hire Harbaugh has been made for a few weeks, and the announcement will come 48-72 hours after Stanford’s bowl game against Virginia Tech (Jan. 3). Will his 2nd wife, Sarah, mind the frigid Michigan winters? (Unrelated: His first wife gave him Hamlet for Christmas; he met his 2nd wife in Vegas.)

Here are some for-fun odds on who will break the story:

8:1 Freep or Detroit News (It LOOKS like the News broke the Rich Rod hire)
12:1 ESPN’s Joe Schad
15:1 San Jose Mercury News
20:1 ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit (Insert Les Miles joke here)
25: Stanford player on Facebook or twitter
30:1 ESPN’s Adam Schefter (Insert Bob Stoops-to-Notre-Dame joke here; also, he’s a Michigan grad)
35:1 AnnArbor.com
40:1 SI’s Andy Staples
50:1 SF Chronicle
60:1 Big Ten Network’s Charissa Thompson
75:1 Michigan player on Facebook or twitter
100:1 Blogger (not a bad guess – see Florida’s recent hire)

[Photos via Getty]