Jim Harbaugh has a new title. As most know, he no longer is the San Francisco 49ers head football coach. What many might not know is that Harbaugh now is Michigan’s “J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Head Football Coach.”

That’s right, a maize-and-blue-crazed family donated $1 million in exchange for the naming and endowment of the head football coach position at Michigan. It happened last February, before which time the coach’s name simply was Brady Hoke. Then inflation kicked in, and Harbaugh signed a seven-year contract that guarantees him a $5 million salary in each of the first three years, $5.5 million in the fourth and fifth years and $6.05 million in the sixth and seventh years. Incentives reportedly could bring his average annual salary to nearly $8 million.

When you’re packing The Big House, which holds 109,901 spectators, it’s easier to pay football coaches than when you rank fourth-last among power-five conference schools in attendance, as did Kansas, which had absolutely no shot at hiring Harbaugh this time.

The endowing and naming of coaching positions is in its infancy, but since it brings in cash, the practice will mushroom.

Soon, corporations or small businesses — depending on the enormity of the position — will get into the arena, cranking up naming-rights prices. It won’t stop there.

Fast-forward 10 years. For the first time, a basketball coach, in order to finance the long overdue football stadium renovations at his school, agrees to sell naming rights to him, not to his position, but to him as a human being.

It’s announced at a news conference in the middle of a season in which the coach is trying to figure out how to motivate his team, ravaged by early exits to the NBA, to its 21st consecutive Big 12 regular-season title.

After discussing the naming-rights issue, coach Warren Buffett reviews particulars of that day’s game.

“If I’m not mistaken, when that double-technical was called on our bench with 4:52 remaining, that brought us to eight team fouls, and we were trailing by two points,” Buffett said of the T called on assistants Justin Roberts and Bonesaw Self. “We had two timeouts left, and they had one. They had one player with four fouls, three with three and two with two. We had four guys with three fouls.”

Chancellor The Brookings Institute thanked him for changing his name for the benefit of the football program, and so did the head football coach, Weaver’s Department Store, as did the mayor, Amyx Barber Shop.