Their competitive fire and journey somehow brought them here, to New Orleans. It was their destiny to meet in 2013 as head coaches of opposing teams in the Super Bowl. It was crazy in some ways, but not so much in others. Consider the Harbaugh boys’ obsession with football brought on by spending inordinate amounts of time as boys in the Michigan Wolverines locker room with Bo Schembechler, who impacted their whole family greatly and remains an iconic figure and whose philosophies are a part of almost every single thing they do as coaches.
“The team, the team, the team,” is all Schembechler taught. It’s all the Harbaugh family knows.
“Grind some meat and rattle the molars” was another gem.
“That’s Bo,” John said. “That’s straight Jerry Hanlon, Bo Schembechler, Michigan, Midwest, Big 10, grey skies football. That goes back to the roots. When Michigan would be ahead, Bo would get on the headphones with Jerry and say, ‘It’s time to grind some meat.’ That means it’s time to run the ball, four-minute offense. They’d run an off tackle play. ‘Rattle the molars’ – that’s coming off the ball. That’s trench warfare for football upfront. That’s football.”
And football is the language of the Harbaugh family.
Or as John simply refers to it: “ball”
Football is how they communicate. The one fact that all three – Jack, John, and Jim – agree on is that it was Jackie who got the boys involved in football and kept them involved in sports. While at Ann Arbor in 1973, she took them to their first practices while Jack was coaching the Wolverines.
“I get way, way, way too much credit for our children,” Jack told the media during Super Bowl week. “The bedrock of the Harbaugh family is Jackie Harbaugh. She did it all.”
Jack said that all he wanted was for the boys to enjoy football and being part of a team. And they did. John loves to tell the story about the time Dad took the lads fishing when they were boys. “We went and got the worms in the backyard and packed a lunch, and we got out there and threw our lines in the water,” John said. “After about five or 10 minutes, the lines aren’t moving. Dad says, ‘Well, boys they aren’t biting. Let’s go.’ That was the last time we ever fished.”
The Harbaughs needed action, teammates, competition and strategy. As John said, they needed “the edge.” So, it was back to football and all about football. John was once mildly interested in politics or perhaps going to law school when he was at Miami (Ohio) as an undergrad because he was a good student, but once he believed he could get a job as a football coach, his career path was made.
“Once they were going to pay me $16,000 a year to coach at Morehead State, I was going,” said Harbaugh of his 1988 salary. “A paid job in coaching? Are you kidding me? I had to take that job.”
Everyone in the family is tied to football, even when they marry into it. His wife Ingrid and he make eye contact at every home game. They blow a kiss and signal each other with a thumbs-up for good luck. On the road, he calls her from the locker room before he takes the field. And they’re very superstitious about it.
But this Super Bowl – or “Sup-HarbBowl” – had one other interesting twist beyond even brother vs, brother with a sister, a brother-in-law, two spouses, parents, and children all rooting at the same time for and against their family members. In a sports world of manufactured “firsts,” this one was legit.
Keeping the family spirit alive on both sides of the fence was Jim’s oldest son, Jay, who took a job as a coaching intern for Uncle John in Baltimore on the video staff. Jay Harbaugh told The Los Angeles Times he was holding rank with team over father. “I couldn’t fathom even considering not being all in with the team that I’m a part of,” Jay said. “Any true competitor feels the exact same way. You have to be totally all in with your team, sold on the vision. Otherwise, there’s no point. No point to being a part of it, putting in all the time that you do and making the sacrifices. … In some alternate universe, if I was conflicted, it would just confuse my dad. It would confuse any true competitor because you can’t reconcile those things in your head. If you’re all in, you’re all in. There’s no wavering there. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition for that whole week.”
