Two searches, two teams, same theme: The longer they take, the bigger the stakes.

This is not to say that the 49ers' elongated search for a proper offensive coordinator and the Raiders' quest for a suitable head coach are identically fitful journeys.

The truth is, the Raiders and 49ers are each weird and frantic franchises in their own unique weird and frantic ways.

But right now, as they both stop and start, interview and re-interview, it's safe to say that neither Mike Singletary nor Al Davis currently feels tremendous.

In fact, they both look like they're a little stuck.

They're stuck with their reputations as dominant, potentially domineering personalities and stuck with their teams' deservedly low status after years of losing and front-office mayhem.

For instance, Davis needs a strong head coach who can break the hex of the past six seasons, yet the only guys who want the job seem like clones of the past few weak failures.

Davis might eventually hire Tom Cable, the decent coach who has been sitting there all along. But by waiting and delaying, Davis has let the world know that he hoped for better options.

That will do no good for Cable if and when he hits his first losing streak in 2009 or 2010, just as Davis' indirect non-support killed the tenures of Bill Callahan, Art Shell and Lane Kiffin during their first struggles.

This is the same cycle that has doomed every Raiders coach since Jon Gruden: a firing, a delay, a fallback hiring, no Davis mandate, eventual disarray and another firing.

Kevin Gilbride? Sounds like Norv Turner 2.0. Don Martindale? Isn't he a mirror image of Cable? (And now Martindale is reportedly headed to Denver, anyway.)

That's how Davis is stuck: He knows the cycle, and somehow, he can't stop repeating it.

Meanwhile, Singletary needs a hard-charging offensive coordinator to take command of the offense, yet anyone that accomplished might not want to subjugate his ideas to Singletary's smash-mouth fervor.

Plus, former NFL exec Mike Lombardi reports on his National Football Post Web site that Singletary's top choice, Scott Linehan, rejected the 49ers' offer last weekend because Linehan thought the team's quarterback situation was a big trouble spot.

Linehan is reportedly a strong candidate to take the offensive coordinator job at Tampa Bay. Hmm, Tampa Bay is more attractive than what the 49ers have to offer?

So Singletary is stuck, and now he and General Manager Scot McCloughan have to begin a new wave of interviews, starting with former Boston College coach Jeff Jagodzinski.

Let's presume that Linehan, Rob Chudzinski, Clyde Christensen, Rick Dennison and maybe a few others were on Singletary's initial short list, once he decided to fire Mike Martz.

And let's assume that the short list made Jed York and McCloughan feel good, or else they wouldn't have been so swift to hire Singletary permanently last month.

Was Singletary surprised when Linehan spurned the 49ers' offer? And what does the spurning say about the 49ers' current NFL status?

If you're an elite offensive coordinator candidate, you have options. Right now, the 49ers gig does not seem to be a marquee option.

Whether that's a Singletary issue or a York issue or a McCloughan issue or a QB issue, I don't know. It's probably all of those issues put together.

Somebody, of course, will end up taking the 49ers' offensive coordinator job. And somebody will end up getting the Raiders' top job.

They might both do fine. But if the new Raiders coach and new 49ers offensive coordinator run into quick and familiar problems in 2009, we'll know that the true problems existed well before they were ever hired.