As Chris Matthews famously says on his show “Hardball” on MSNBC, “Tell me something I don’t know.” With seven NFL teams and perhaps as many as a dozen major college teams expected to be looking for head coaches, what coach who has appeared in a Super Bowl and is actively looking for work has the best winning percentage?

Bill Cowher? Mike Shanahan? Mike Holmgren? Brian Billick? Jon Gruden? All would be incorrect answers. The answer is Mike Martz, who owns a career .624 winning percentage and is a phenomenal 21 games over .500 in a league where the median winning percentage is .492 in the salary-capped era. He also has three divisional titles and one Super Bowl appearance to his credit. For the record, Cowher’s winning percentage is .623, Shanahan’s .598, Holmgren’s .592, Billick’s .556 and Gruden’s .540. The men whose faces would arguably go on a Mt. Rushmore of coaches’ records don’t even overshadow Martz, who has the 19th-best winning percentage of any coach who has coached 50 or more games in the NFL. Martz would outrank even Joe Gibbs (.621), Bill Belichick (.620), Bill Walsh (.609) and Tom Landry (.607).

Brad Biggs’ story this week about how Martz would be interested in working with Jay Cutler in Chicago started me thinking. Why is no one writing about Martz as a candidate anywhere? Sure, he has a reputation for being a prima donna and was chased out of his last two jobs as an offensive coordinator. But what happened after he left the Rams, the Lions and the 49ers? They got worse. The Lions got much, much worse.

The cases of the Rams and the Lions really need no explanation, and perhaps Martz should feel like the captain a ship relieved of duty before it hit an iceberg and sank with him safely on shore. But surely you’ll say that the 49ers appear headed in the right direction. Except at 4-6 they are not currently on pace to match last year’s 7-9 record, and their passing attack -- the area of the game Martz most influences -- ranked 13th in the league in 2008 and is currently 23rd. Martz even got 2,046 passing yards out of ex-NFL Europe journeyman Shaun Hill, who had been out of the league two years earlier, in only eight starts. Hill led the 49ers to a 5-3 record in those starts, and if you extend his stats over a full season, Hill hits the 4,000-yard threshold long considered the line of demarcation between good and great passers and offenses. Hill has since been benched.

In fact, Martz has had every quarterback he has worked with over a long period hit that 4,000-yard threshold sooner or later -- Kurt Warner, Marc Bulger and Jon Kitna. What do these quarterbacks have in common? None of them was a highly-regarded talent before Martz hooked up with them. Only Bulger was even drafted, and not by the team Martz had him with. The others were essentially street free agents. What does this say? Martz can do more with less at the quarterback position than virtually anyone.

Has Martz earned his reputation and contributed to his current place outside of football? The answer, obviously, is yes. But Todd Haley is hardly “Mr. Personality” in Kansas City. Eric Mangini isn’t practicing the techniques of how to win friends and influencing people in Cleveland. Isn’t a .200-point or better improvement in winning percentage at least worth the risk of talking to Martz, not only for a coordinator position but also a head coaching vacancy? And isn’t it, based on the above-described evidence, almost negligent not to have him on a list of candidates under investigation? If he’s not being considered, NFL and college teams aren’t looking hard enough for candidates. Given his current employment status, Martz isn’t likely to be as expensive as a more sought-after candidate like Shanahan, Cowher or Holmgren. He also has a 20-plus year career in the college ranks, including coordinating some very interesting teams at Arizona State.

Is age a factor? Not really. Martz is 58 years old and is about 11 months older than Belichick. He’s about six months older than the eternally youthful Pete Carroll.

Am I making a case for Martz? I guess I am, but more as an outcome of what I’m really trying to illustrate, which is that your favorite team (or mine) isn’t looking or thinking about who’s leading them nearly as hard as they might like to convince you they are. It’s an indictment of organizational thought or lack thereof.

The statistical snapshot I’ve laid out for Martz may admittedly be a bit misleading since some of the coaches who rank above him aren’t considered Hall of Fame-caliber coaches and were, in many cases, lucky enough to take over good teams. Martz’ record pales in comparison to that of a Lombardi or a Shula. George Allen also outranks him, and he never won a championship.

But isn’t the ultimate measurement of a head coach what his record is? As Bill Parcells has said, “You are what your record says you are.” Incidentally, Parcells career winning percentage is .570, more than .50 points less than Martz’s.