The Harbaugh Brothers’ Championship Quest Continues: Part 2 Kicks Off Saturday

HOUSTON — Eighty-four-year-old Jack Harbaugh found himself standing in the midst of championship confetti, with pure joy on his face, just as any proud father should.

His youngest son, Jim, had just led the Michigan Wolverines to a national championship. All around him inside NRG Stadium, a party was erupting. Among the celebrants was Jack’s oldest son, John, coach of the Baltimore Ravens, who are entering the NFL playoffs as the No. 1 seed in the AFC. They host the Houston Texans on Saturday.

Could Jack envision a February repeat at the Super Bowl in Las Vegas? Could he and his wife, Jackie, end a single football season with one son taking the college crown and the other the NFL’s?

“Can you imagine?” Jack asked.

Well, he was told, you are the best person to imagine it.

“No, I can’t,” he laughed. “I’ve got to have some time to consider it, but I know John is locked in, and they have a very good team, and they are playing very, very well as a team. There’s a chance.”

Until last week, no pair of brothers had ever combined to coach college and pro football champions, let alone in the same season. John already has a Super Bowl to his credit; his Ravens defeated San Francisco 11 years ago. The coach of that 49ers team? Jim, of course.

It’s all part of a winding, complicated and mostly successful football life for the Harbaugh family. Jack was a longtime coach himself, a Michigan assistant under Bo Schembechler before stints as head coach of Western Michigan (1982-86) and Western Kentucky (1989-2002).

John spent three years as an assistant to his father at Western Michigan. When Jack was at Western Kentucky, Jim, then a quarterback in the NFL, was deemed a “volunteer assistant” for the program and spent his offseason recruiting for the Hilltoppers. John, then an assistant at the University of Cincinnati, provided recruiting lists and scouting reports for Jim.

Jack eventually led WKU to the 2002 Division I-AA national championship.

That meant Jim was the final member of the Football Coaching Harbaughs to win a championship.

“I can now sit at the big person’s table in the family,” Jim said. “They won’t keep me over there on the little table anymore. My dad, Jack Harbaugh, won a national championship, and my brother won a Super Bowl. It’s good to be at the big person’s table from now on.”

The entire Harbaugh family was in Houston to celebrate with Jim earlier this month. This, they all agreed, was a better situation than that tense Super Bowl in New Orleans.

The idea of two brothers coaching against each other for football’s ultimate prize was a fun storyline for fans but an emotional minefield for the family. Tom Crean, their brother-in-law and then the head basketball coach at Indiana University, spoke about the situation with NBA coach Doc Rivers prior to the Super Bowl.

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