The “last year” part was the Thanksgiving Night spectacle between the 49ers and Ravens – Jim vs. John – on the biggest family holiday of the year nearly 15 months earlier in Baltimore, that everyone in the Harbaugh family seemed to be equally uncomfortable with at the time.
Proud, sure. Flattered, of course. They were both NFL head coaches. Their father was a championship football coach, their idol, and mentor. All of America was watching. It was a unique story of a lifetime of work for the two men who grew up in the same house and competed. Their sister even married a coach. One was famous. One became famous. It was a football story on a football holiday, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry, and pumpkin pie. John and his wife Ingrid turned the weekend into a 50th wedding anniversary for their parents in Baltimore.
But in the end, it wasn’t joyful once the game started, and the family winced knowing there’d be a Harbaugh winner – and a Harbaugh loser.
Their younger sister Joani, who is married to University of Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean, didn’t come. Their parents, Jack and Jackie, came to Baltimore and did a pre-game photo op on the field with Jim and John and then retreated to Art Modell’s office inside the stadium where they watched the game on television. Their hearts couldn’t take it, and they didn’t want cameras on them, evaluating their emotions and expressions all night.
This time, however, on the grandest stage of them all, there would be no retreat from the intense media coverage of their two boys facing each other in the biggest game in the land.
There was more history and relationship than even best friends could have between Jim and John. How is it possible that two kids who grew up in the same bedroom in various football coaching homes throughout the Midwest could grow up to not only be head coaches in the NFL, but now be meeting in Super Bowl XLVII? What were the odds of that?
And how could this not be the biggest story line at the Super Bowl?
The parents echoed the sentiments of Joani: “One was going to win, one was going to lose and you felt bad. You feel a tug when you’re watching the game.” Her mother Jackie was much myopic. “Of course they both wanted to win, but I wanted the game to end in a tie [the first time],” Jackie said. “I wish the Super Bowl could end in a tie, but I know it’s not going to.”
In the Harbaugh family, it was always about competing and winning. Both John and Jim were always wildly competitive, whether it was the piece of tape that separated their bedroom in Ann Arbor, Michigan as boys or a game of horse in the backyard.
“We both relish the confrontation,” John said. “I like an edge.”
Of course, when you’re the least famous of the siblings and have been for almost 25 years, and when you get the chance to beat your brother at anything, you want to win. So far, John had bragging rights in their one NFL head-to-head game, even though Jim had a perceived quarter of a century of winning in lots of other places. John and the Ravens won that first matchup in Baltimore, 16-6, but that wouldn’t hold the same weight in the family history as winning in New Orleans at Super Bowl XLVII.
There was very little doubt that Jim Harbaugh was the better athlete of the brothers. Well, maybe at least one person had some doubt.
Jim played quarterback at Michigan and spent 15 seasons in the NFL, nearly going to Super Bowl in his glory season of 1995.
“All of that talk about him being better when were kids is bull,” John said. “We kinda went in stages. I was a faster grower when he was younger. I was better most of the time, and if you look at some of the pictures, I was towering over him by a foot for a long time. He was taking a lot of beatings early on.”
But the younger brother made up some ground for family bragging rights in his twenties.
While John was off being a college football coach at Morehead State and Cincinnati, Jim was running around NFL stadiums with Mike Ditka and Ted Marchibroda, making millions of dollars and slinging the football. John got the peace of anonymity, and Jim had all of the good – and bad – of stardom.
But they both had football and they were both doing what they loved.
“I can just remember living and dying, along with our parents and Joani, with every single snap that Jim ever took as an NFL football player,” John said. “Whether it was Chicago or Indianapolis, or all the other places he was at. That is how it is when you’re family. To watch a family member play, I think you are far more nervous than they are by far. That’s how I always felt. I was just always completely and enormously proud of what he was doing as a player and how he was competing.”
