About Harbaugh's whopper

For those of you who think our interest in Jim Harbaughs laughably transparent whopper about the 49ers interest in Peyton Manning is pointless, well, youre right. We have a fetish about facts, and he doesnt. Tomato, to-mah-to.Or in this case, tomato, handful of gravel.And youre right, of course, if you think transparent whoppers help make a great coach. A coach is devoted to facts the way he is a tool on a belt. If you cant find the right fact for the job, you go out and make one of your own.But lets ask a question just for fun here. If Mike Singletary were the guy trying to sell you the idea that the 49ers didnt flirt with Peyton Manning, what would you do? Laugh? Howl? Guffaw? Call him an idiot and demand that he be fired for 358th time?Or E, all of the above?The answer, of course, is Fall of the above, plus feel insulted that someone would take even a moment of your mental bandwidth telling a lie that needless.And dont deny it. Thats exactly what you would do. You know it, we know it, and you know that we know.So what were talking about, then, isnt the lie, but the identity of the liar. Jim Harbaugh won 14 of 18 games. Mike Singletary won 18 of 40. Thats your litmus test? Then fine. To each his own.And if liar is too strong a word, you can have fibber, manipulator, prevaricator, psychologist, motivator, used car salesman or hen teaser. It doesnt matter. If the boat gets floated, thats all you care about, and thats all you have to care about. This is why we fought World War IIso you could believe any cockamamie story you want, without reprisal.Oh, and to beat the Germans, too.But heres a different way to look at it, not from the priggish narrow-minded journalists point of view, but from the sports executives. It came from an old retired baseball general manager and owner who, trust us, was far smarter than either you or I. And he said this, more or less:Lies are like money. You have to spend them judiciously, and only when you need to spend them. Spend too often, and you go broke.He would tell the tactical whopper, when he really needed to, and with a completely straight face. When he needed to sell it, he sold it heartily, with all the earnestness of Abraham Lincoln.But he didnt tell a lot of them, because he never knew when hed really need one. He spent judiciously.Jim Harbaugh blew one of his on a gumball machine.You see, the 49ers did flirt with Peyton Manning, and there is neither shame nor disingenuousness in that. Its called looking into upgrading the position, and in the mega-pragmatic world of professional football, its what you do. You know that, we know that, Alex Smith knows that.After all, who preaches competition more than Jim Harbaugh? Whats competition but bringing in a new guy to test the old guy? Or at least investigating the idea of bringing in a new guy to test the old guy.In short, there was no harm done hereunless he thinks Smith is so fragile that he needed to hear the lie, and a quarterback that fragile cannot be a good one. Smith showed he is not fragile. Therefore, it was a lie Harbaugh didnt need to spend.Or maybe were just talking about semantics. Maybe Harbaughs interest in Manning was just what Brian Sabean calls kicking the tires. And if so, theres no harm in his kicking the tires, because the tires have been given to him to kick. Nor is there harm in his saying he did so, unless he is trying to foster more of that us versus those bastards on the outside world view that he thinks helped the 49ers a year ago.Well, okay, even if that view essentially insults the players. They know how they wonwith better coaching, better position choices, better play. They didnt need a bad lie to do it, and this is a bad lie by sports standards because it didnt really need to be spent.But it is gone now, and Harbaugh has one less to use later, when the audience for it might be less credulous. It wasnt that he told the fib. Its that he didnt need to.And that, children, is a flirtation with no good end.Ray Ratto is a columnist for CSNBayArea.com