Jim Harbaugh: 'I didn't leave the 49ers; I felt like the 49er hierarchy left me'

While the San Francisco 49ers made sure to officially characterize their parting of ways with Jim Harbaugh as mutual, the team's now former head coach doesn't see it that way at all.

Appearing on "The TK Show," a podcast hosted by Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News, Harbaugh explained that the decision was, in fact, quite one-sided.

"Yes, I was told I wouldn't be the coach any more," Harbaugh said. "And then ... you can call it 'mutual,' I mean, I wasn't going to put the 49ers in the position to have a coach that they didn't want any more. But that's the truth of it. I didn't leave the 49ers. I felt like the 49er hierarchy left me."

With reports about a deteriorating relationship having surfaced early on in the year, Harbaugh and the 49ers parting ways at the end of the 2014 campaign hardly came as much of a surprise.

As Harbaugh's comments indicate, however, the coach didn't appear to have his sights set elsewhere until he was informed - following the 49ers' Week 15 loss to the division rival Seattle Seahawks - that he would be let go at the end of the season.

Harbaugh, of course, had little trouble finding work elsewhere, as he was quickly hired to be the head coach at the University of Michigan.