Seahawks' Richard Sherman wanted to run up score after Jim Harbaugh's honking antics

"What's your deal?"

It's the question Pete Carroll famously posed to Jim Harbaugh in their not-so-halcyon Pac-10 days after Harbaugh's Stanford squad ran up the score on Carroll and USC in a 55-21 blowout three years ago.

Carroll didn't have to ask again Sunday night after his Seattle Seahawks made Harbaugh's San Francisco 49ers look like fool's gold with a 42-13 whipping, but he might have been wondering nonetheless.

Let's go back to Week 7, when the Niners emerged with a less-than-convincing 13-6 victory over the 'Hawks at Candlestick Park. Despite the slim margin — not to mention a few key drops that foiled Seattle — Harbaugh apparently felt pretty good about the win, enough so that he honked at the Seahawks team bus from his car afterward.

"He honked his horn at the bus and waved," said Seahawks cornerback Sherman, recounting the story to Yahoo!'s Mike Silver. "That happened — a bunch of the guys told me. Yeah, he was (honking)."

But Harbaugh, who turned 49 Sunday, was eating crow after the rematch.

"Happy birthday — that's what you get," Seattle free safety Earl Thomas told Silver. "Yeah, he (honked at us). It seems like he tries to be a professional in front of the camera, but he does his antics, like that, when the cameras aren't around.

"He's just a big kid. We don't worry about that stuff. We just play the game. The best team won, and it was convincing."

But if Carroll had any notion of feeding his penchant of treating blowouts like he's padding a BCS margin, he resisted Sunday.

Seattle had scored at least 50 points in its previous two games, and none other than Sherman, who played on that 2009 Cardinal team for Harbaugh but thought his coach's decision to go for a two-point conversion late against the Trojans "seemed a little much," suggested Carroll try to extend the 50-burger streak to three weeks.

"I'm not gonna lie to you," Sherman said. "I told Pete, 'Let's score and go for two.' He said, 'We have more class than that.' "

Apparently Carroll has the better team, too. His rookie quarterback, Russell Wilson, can seemingly do no wrong, and the Seahawks suddenly have a multi-dimensional offense to go with the NFL's stingiest scoring defense. Seattle also now appears formidable on the road, important because that's where they'll likely be playing in the playoffs since the 49ers need only dispatch the Arizona Cardinals next week to wrap up the NFC West and a postseason home date.

But Harbaugh's team still has plenty of wounds to lick and, doubtless, more questions about whether promoting second-year quarterback Colin Kaepernick was the right call. After all, Alex Smith has won four in a row vs. Seattle, including October's victory.

But even if Harbaugh doesn't have all the answers, he does have Carroll's praise.

"I have great respect for him," Carroll told Silver. "He's a great competitor. We might not hang out together, but that doesn't mean anything about what I think of him."