Whereas their sons add one other chapter to their unmatched slice of NFL historical past, Jack and Jackie Harbaugh can be tuned in from throughout the nation.
The nice and cozy and endlessly enthusiastic couple can be celebrating their 63rd anniversary Monday when sons John and Jim coach in opposition to one another for a 3rd time, with Jim’s Chargers enjoying host to John’s Baltimore Ravens at SoFi Stadium.
The Harbaughs are the one brothers to face one another as NFL head coaches. John is 2-0 within the matchups, having defeated Jim’s San Francisco 49ers on Thanksgiving in 2011 and by three factors within the Tremendous Bowl the next season.
The dad and mom have been squirming of their seats for these video games — are you able to presumably root for each groups directly? — and this time can be on the Florida house of daughter Joanie watching with household.
For Jack and Jackie, Tremendous Bowl XLVII in New Orleans was emotionally wrenching.
“Right up until the kickoff of the game, there was just this euphoria of excitement,” Jack recalled. “Every little thing. Jackie’s dad was 95, 96 years old and he was able to go to New Orleans. He got up on the stage and had his picture taken with John and Jim on the Friday before the game. Everything was great.
Jack Harbaugh, the father of Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh and Ravens coach John Harbaugh, shares some of his fondest football memories.
“Until the moment the ball was kicked off. When that ball left the kicker’s foot — if I close my eyes I can still see it — that ball’s rolling end over end, higher and higher, and then it’s coming down and all at once I’m realizing, ‘Oh my goodness, there’s going to be a winner and there’s going to be a loser.’ The rest of the game, we were like zombies.”
The dad and mom have been watching from a collection with Roger Goodell, and at one level Jackie leaned over to the commissioner and mentioned, “Is there any way this can end in a tie?”
John Harbaugh mentioned that he would welcome having his dad and mom at Monday night time’s sport, whereas he and his brother are centered on what’s occurring on the sector. The 7-3 Chargers and 7-4 Ravens are each in second place of their respective divisions.
“If my parents were there it would be good, but it’s too complicated because this game is really important,” John mentioned. “You’re responsible for all these people in your building. Everybody has futures and everybody has aspirations. And these NFL games are just fights, man.
“On the periphery is the family part of it. Mom and Dad are caught in the middle. They’re kind of in the crossfire. There’s nothing going on between me and Jim, there’s no animosity, it’s just that we owe our allegiances to our players.”
Jack and Jackie first observed one another as freshmen at Bowling Inexperienced College in 1957. Their first encounter wasn’t on the soccer subject — although Jack was a quarterback and Jackie a cheerleader — however within the classroom.
“I claim it was a biology class, Jackie says it was an English class,” mentioned Jack, 85, sitting on a sofa within the spacious, memorabilia-filled basement of their house in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Both approach, the petite and bright-eyed Jackie Cipiti was sitting within the entrance row, pocket book and pencil on the prepared. She was the proud daughter of a first-generation Italian household. Within the first roll name, the professor mispronounced her final title as “CHIP-uh-tee.”
Jack, left, and Jackie Harbaugh smile whereas taking about their sons.
(Sam Farmer / Los Angeles Occasions)
Jackie wasn’t going to let that stand. She had a little bit of an edge to her, the identical spark her sons now present on the postgame podium.
“She said, ‘It’s not CHIP-uh-tee, it’s sup-PEE-tee. C-I-P-I-T-I,’” Jack recalled with fun, barking out the letters like a drill sergeant. “She’s calling this guy out the first day of class. Not only is she a great-looking girl, but, damn, she’s got some pop. She’s a firecracker.”
And for the following three years he was pals with that firecracker, till they began courting round Christmas of their senior 12 months. She was lovely and energetic. He was lovestruck.
“I thought she was so much smarter than I was and so friendly,” he mentioned. “If there was a charity event, most of the girls would just be standing around smiling and Jackie was making the pizzas, hanging the coats, welcoming everybody at the door.”
Inside months of graduating, they have been married. That they had a modest begin, dwelling in Canton, Ohio, the place Jack was a highschool assistant coach. Among the many perks of the job, he obtained two free nosebleed seats to each Cleveland Browns house sport. The workforce was having a tough time shifting tickets, so Browns proprietor Artwork Modell supplied free admission to each highschool soccer employees within the area.
Free Browns tickets? Hi there, honeymoon!
“We got married on a Saturday and it was the Ohio State-Michigan game,” Jack mentioned. “We watched that game on television, and the next day we went to Municipal Stadium in Cleveland to watch the Browns play the Giants.”
There, they bumped right into a bunch of teaching pals who had attended their wedding ceremony the day earlier than.
“We walked into the stadium where the seats are so high up you can’t tell if they’re playing football or ice hockey down there,” Jack mentioned. “Our friends see us and say, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’”
His buddies ribbed him, all whereas understanding a correct getaway was too expensive on a highschool assistant’s wage. None might have guessed that the budding Harbaugh household would in the future make NFL historical past.
All of it got here dashing again to Jim Harbaugh when his workforce performed at Cleveland earlier this month.
“I caught myself right before the game started getting super nostalgic,” the Chargers coach mentioned. “The story I’ve heard maybe 50 times about Mom and Dad’s honeymoon. After the national anthem, that’s what I was picturing. I looked into the upper decks and how my dad described walking up the aisle and seeing some of the coaches who were making sport of it, saying, ‘You cheap son of a gun! Great honeymoon, Harbaugh!’”
Sixty-three years later, the Harbaughs have a wealth of reminiscences past their goals.
“It’s an example of two people who didn’t have a lot of means, just their love,” Jim mentioned. “Their love for 63 years is just a source of joy. That’s what they’ve given me, my brother, our sister and our kids.
“That ‘enthusiasm unknown to mankind?’ It’s real,” he mentioned, invoking a household mantra. “That’s the way my mom and dad attack every day.”
