By Justin Worsley,
The San Francisco 49ers have hired Jim Harbaugh to be their new head coach.
Harbaugh, who has been the head coach at Stanford since 2007, agreed to a five-year, $25 million deal with the team. It will be his first head coaching job in the NFL.
The 49ers were favored to win the NFC West division this season. San Francisco, however, struggled to take advantage of a division in which all teams had a losing record and finished 6-10. Former head coach Mike Singletary was fired a week before the season ended.
Harbaugh overtook a Stanford program that went 1-11 in 2006. Each season, the team showed improvement and the Cardinal won a team-record 12 games this season.
Several NFL teams were interested in Harbaugh, including Miami and Denver. The Dolphins flew out to California on Wednesday prepared to offer him up to $8 million to coach in South Beach. The team, however, ultimately decided to remain with their current head coach.
Harbaugh's first job as head coach will be to find himself a quarterback. Both of this season's starters, Alex and Troy Smith, are slated to become free agents and the only quarterback under contract is David Carr.
Harbaugh, a former NFL quarterback, knows the importance of having a signal caller and coached Andrew Luck at Stanford, who was projected to be the first-overall pick in this year's draft had he not decided to stay in school this week.
San Francisco has not made the playoffs since 2002.
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