Think back, waaayyyy back to the opening Thursday night of the season, when Stanford offered a money back guarantee to dissatisfied ticket holders and still drew a crowd to its newly renovated, scaled-back stadium that looked like an unancticipated spring game at halftime of a 17-17 struggle the Cardinal would eventually win:

You might think that upset would galvanize the notoriously distracted Palo Alto crowd into moving Jim Harbaugh's boys past wine tastings and NPR pledge drives on the priority list. Alas, a year after knocking off USC and Cal (ending five-year losing streaks to both Pete Carroll and Jeff Tedford) in Harbaugh's debut, the Cardinal are sitting at 5-5, 4-3 in the conference, another USC/Cal upset from finishing at .500 for the first time since 2001, and still can't buy a crowd. It's so bad, says the Seattle Times, it might cost them their coach.

The Cardinal are averaging just over 30,000 for a 50,000-seat stadium, the worst number for any BCS conference team except Northwestern (surprise) or truly ghastly Washington State; the 40 percent vacancy rate is also one of the highest numbers in the country, and adjusted for real numbers rather than announced, it's probably closer to half empty most of the time. The biggest official draw through the first four home games was 33,000 for a visit from San Jose State, and only 30,000 (probably closer to 25,000 in reality) showed up for a comeback win over Arizona in October, after which Harbaugh exasperatedly asked, "How could you not want to come watch this team? How could these seats not be filled?"

This week, Harbaugh was more diplomatic about the crowd, which should be out in relative force for one side or the other with USC in town for its revenge thing. It had better be: Harbaugh is clearly the top choice to take over the vacant Oakland Raider job across the bay at the end of the year. If his labors go appreciated mainly by tens of thousands of empty seats again -- or worse, tens of thousands of vocal Trojan fans -- for the biggest game of the year, the home finale, with modest stakes on the line, it could be hasta la vista Farm, hello Al Davis' sarcophagus of doom.