Pentagon Toilet Seat, Meet Stanford's Private Bathroom

To poop in private or not to poop in private, that is is the question. Whether tis nobler for Stanford's Jim Harbaugh to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous public urination or oppose them. Such is the ruminative monologue racing through the minds of Stanford supporters in the wake of this announcement: a Stanford booster built a $50,000 to $70,000 private bathroom for coach Jim Harbaugh. Why was this private bathroom necessary? According to Harbaugh, "It cuts down on drag."

Already public indignation has poured in regarding the exorbitant cost of the bathroom. Some have pointed out that twenty athletic department employees have been fired in the past year due to budget constraints at Stanford. Others have wondered whether a private bathroom for a football coach sends the wrong message. I say, bully for Harbaugh. So what if at least one, and potentially two employees, could have been kept on for the cost of the private bathroom? Is Jim Harbaugh supposed to walk all the way down the hall, twenty full steps, and use a public restroom like a common peasant? Of course not, is he a barbarian? In this column, we come not to bury Harbaugh's private bathroom, but to praise it.

Some people might hear about a bathroom that costs between $50,000 and $70,000 -- how do we not know the actual cost, is there a toilet to be named later included in the contract? -- and think it's yet another sign that major college football is devouring the educational interests of colleges. Those people are idiots. They're probably the same people who had an issue with the Pentagon's $640 toilet seat or the luxurious bathrooms that corporate CEO's built themselves as their companies crumbled around them. These bathrooms aren't evidence of a colossal lack of perspective; they're the tangible and delectable fruit of well-deserved respect.

Only losers use public bathrooms.


These bourgeois critics are so short-sighted. They get me so angry I almost knocked the caviar off my cracker just thinking about them. Plainly they don't understand the importance of a throne-like isolation, the zen state that can come from being able to stack your own (slightly) pornographic magazines on the back of the toilet and the warming feeling of burning an incense candle while you sketch out gameplans to beat Pete Carroll, who doesn't, by the way, have his own private bathroom at USC.

In the high stakes war of collegiate football, the 13 seconds a day that Harbaugh saves by not walking 20 steps to the public bathroom in the Stanford football offices could be the difference between beating Cal or losing to Cal. Al Pacino asked for an inch in his final speech in Any Given Sunday. An inch ... please; Harbaugh just gained twenty steps. That's 240 inches! If Pacino can win a fictional championship in a fictional football league in a movie (that features a memorable guest turn from Jessie Spano playing a whore) with an extra inch, Harbaugh can hang 70 on Oregon this fall with an extra 240 inches.

That's a bona fide fact.

Something that people with private bathrooms get. Something that the rest of you losers, those of you using the public bathrooms, just don't get.

Here's another fact, I'm about to bust up in your face.

Do you know what Jim Harbaugh's record is at Stanford?

Nine and 15.

Bam.



That's only six games worse than even. Do you know what that means? When Jim Harbaugh has been coaching at Stanford for 100 games, he's on a pace to have 38 victories against just 62 defeats. At this pace, if he coaches for 22 years, he'll almost have 100 total victories. Do you know how hard that is to pull off? Losing that many games without winning hardly any and still being so popular that you can get big boosters to ensure you defecate in private? Can you imagine what Jim Harbaugh could have done with his extra 240 inches during his first 24 games?

I can: he'd probably be 10 and 14.

Plus, and let's be clear about this, Jim Harbaugh is a Michigan man. Michigan is a football factory and Michigan men, like all football geniuses, deserve to be treated differently. Did you complain when Fielding Yost had a private outhouse constructed in 1917? What about in 1978 when Alabama gave Bear Bryant running water in his office to replace his slop jar? Of course you didn't. My point is, football factories play by their own rules.

And Stanford, by God, is a football factory.

You probably snickered at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new bathroom. Rolled your eyes when Harbaugh shut the door, opened up the newest Maxim magazine and took aim at the Cal logo on the bottom of the white porcelain bowl. That's because you don't get it, never will, football coaches are special. They're like Einstein with pigskins, Mozart in running sneakers and shorts, Gandhi with bigger food budgets. If Martin Luther King were alive today, he'd be a football coach.

So would Jesus.

Those men would get it; football coaching is a higher calling. One that can't be answered with all the clatter that comes from a public bathroom. Jesus may have been born in a manger, but if he was coaching football, he'd go to the bathroom by himself. So don't judge Harbaugh. Like the Bible says, Judge not lest ye be judged. Stop the criticism now, you're just making yourselves look stupid.

Jim Harbaugh needs a private bathroom. He's cut down on drag. And now his football genius has got 240 inches to spare. I think I speak for everyone when I say, it's time for miracles -- all fertilized by Jim Harbaugh's magic poop -- to germinate and blossom in Palo Alto.