For one family, Super Bowl XLVII is guaranteed to end in both joy and despair. As head coaches of the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers respectively, brothers John and Jim Harbaugh cannot both finish on the winning side.
This tale of two siblings – born just 15 months apart – is a familiar one to NFL fans, who saw the Harbaughs face off in a regular-season game in November 2011. But that doesn't make it any less remarkable. Sunday will mark not only the first time two brothers have coached against each other in a Super Bowl, but also the first time it has happened in the championship game of any major US sports league.
Little wonder the nation's media were so quick to re-christen this game as the "HarBowl". More has been written about John and Jim's story this week than about the players on their teams. Even the two coaches' parents, Jack and Jackie, have acquired celebrity status. So great was the volume of interview requests from reporters seeking out family anecdotes that the couple eventually decided to host their own press conference at the Super Bowl media centre.
Jack was himself a football coach for more than 40 years – working his way up from high-school jobs to college. Both John and Jim have cited him as their role model, saying their father never pushed them into football but always involved them in his world – bringing them to practice as kids and sitting up with them, watching his teams' game films, in the evening.
He also instilled in them a mantra. Each morning, when dropping John and Jim off for school, Jack would remind his boys that whatever challenges the day might bring, they must attack them with an "enthusiasm unknown to mankind".
Jim, the younger brother, did not need to be told twice. In the Harbaugh family narrative, he was the born competitor – one whose relentless commitment to winning led teachers to phone home in despair. Jack and Jackie were called to the school and informed that Jim was upsetting the other children with his ruthlessness in playground games. They dismissed the teacher's concerns as the symptom of an education system which celebrated mediocrity.
Decades later, that competitiveness remains Jim's defining characteristic. The 49ers offensive co-ordinator, Greg Roman, said on Wednesday:
He is the same no matter what we do. Just last year a group of us [coaches] climbed a mountain in California together and he absolutely had to be the first one to the top. Whenever there is any opportunity to compete, you know Jim is going to give you his best.
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Despite being younger, Jim was also the superior athlete – a quarterback with a powerful arm who was a first-round pick for the Chicago Bears in the 1987 NFL draft. He enjoyed 14 years as a pro, and during the last seven years of that career spent his free time assisting his father at Western Kentucky. Upon retirement, Jim moved seamlessly into full-time coaching.
That, for Jim, was always the plan – to follow in his father's footsteps. John's path was less clear. A fierce competitor in his own right, he had played as a defensive back for the University of Miami (Ohio), but always knew he was unlikely to reach the NFL. His interests were more diverse and, after injuries persuaded him to drop the sport during his final year of college, he considered a career in politics.
Instead, he informed his parents one day over dinner that he had decided to try his luck as a coach. "I wish I had something really clever to say about that," John told reporters this week, when asked what prompted the change of heart. "PresidentObamasaid he wouldn't let his kids get into football, so it would be great to say our dad wouldn't let us get into politics. [To say] I wanted to do that but dad said, 'No, it's not safe,' which it probably isn't."
The real story, as Jack tells it, is entertaining enough. "[John was a] political science [student], and talking about going to law school ," he said. "Jackie was so excited. She loves political science and politics. [John] came home one day and we're sitting around the table having dinner. Jackie says, 'John, what law school will it be?' John says, 'Mom, I think I want to try coaching.' At that point… Jackie went face down into the mashed potatoes."
John ascended only slowly to the top of his new profession. He too started off working for his father – taking on a graduate assistantship at Western Michigan in 1984. From there he would spend the next decade as an assistant coach at different universities, before stepping up into the NFL in 1998, as special teams co-ordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles.
That was his job for the next nine years, before he became the defensive backs coach for the Eagles in 2007. When he applied to become head coach of the Baltimore Ravens a year later, few observers even took his candidacy seriously. Although he had been coaching for 20 years, John had never called plays on offense or defense. But after Baltimore's top candidate turned down the position, John was the man the Ravens turned to.
Jim, by contrast, moved swiftly. It was 2002 when he got his first full-time gig – coaching the Oakland Raiders' quarterbacks – but just a year later he became head coach at the University of San Diego. Three impressive seasons later, he moved to Stanford. By the time he joined San Francisco, in 2011, he had built a reputation as one of the sharpest minds in football – fresh from leading his team to their best-ever season and winning recognition as college football's coach of the year.
Neither the 49ers nor Ravens have had any cause to regret their appointments. The San Francisco team which Jim inherited in 2011 had not reached the playoffs for almost a decade, but in his first season they fell one game short of the Super Bowl. Regardless of the outcome on Sunday, he has taken them a step further this time around.
The Ravens were not going through quite such a drastic dry run when they hired John, but they had missed out on the playoffs in three of the previous four seasons. Since his appointment, Baltimore have won at least one postseason game every year. His 63 wins over the past five seasons are the joint-most of any head coach – matched only by New England's Bill Belichick.
'It's not exactly Churchill and Roosevelt'
If the brothers' successes are similar, their approaches are different. In his two years in the league, Jim has developed a reputation as short-tempered and impatient – famed for his sideline tantrums and frosty dealings with the media. His players describe a character who is so obsessed with his work that he forgets to even change his clothes.
"Every day he has the same dry-fit [marker hanging round his neck], the same hat, same pants and same shoes," said the running back LeMichael James, when asked about Jim's trademark fleece and khakis look. "He is not going to change much."
John, by contrast, is perceived as more of a calming influence – self-effacing in his dealings with the press and less prone to letting his emotions take control. He too, though, has a ruthless side. One of his first acts after arriving in Baltimore was to tell senior players who had been granted two lockers at the team's facility that they would have to go back to using one like everybody else.
If there is one thing both have in common it is an enduring faith in their father. Throughout the regular season, John and Jim send footage of their games to Jack every week – seeking his opinions. Typically, they will call each other every few days, too, sometimes just to catch up but often to talk football too. This week, they say the only conversation was to liaise over their parents' accommodation in New Orleans.
Each brother has sought to deflect attention away from their own story and back onto those of their players. John said:
It's not exactly Churchill and Roosevelt. We get it, [the story is] really cool, and it's really exciting and all of that. But it's really about the team. It's about the players. The more we focus on those guys, the better it is for everybody.
Yet the presence of these two brothers at Super Bowl XLVII is more than just a quirk of fate. This is a season in which both John and Jim have taken enormous gambles that might easily have backfired, but which have instead paid off richly.
For John the key moment arrived on 10 December. The Ravens were just one win away from sealing their playoff spot when he decided to fire the offensive co-ordinator Cam Cameron and replace him with the team's quarterbacks coach, Jim Caldwell.
Baltimore's form had dipped – they suffered losses to Pittsburgh and Washington after winning nine of their first 11 games – but Cameron's offense had still put up 48 points en route to those defeats. He was also a close personal friend of John's, but the head coach could see something was not right. Quarterback Joe Flacco had thrown for less than 200 yards in six of the team's previous nine games.
John gave Caldwell licence to open up the playbook and take more shots downfield. Flacco responded, outshining two of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game – Peyton Manning and Tom Brady – en route to playoff victories over the Denver Broncos and the New England Patriots. In three postseason games, Flacco has thrown eight touchdowns and no interceptions.
Jim's defining move had arrived a few weeks sooner. After seeing his starting quarterback, Alex Smith, go down with a concussion on 11 November, the coach had no choice but to hand the reins over to the back-up, Colin Kaepernick. It was entirely Jim's decision, though, to retain Kaepernick as his starter once Smith had returned two weeks later.
At the time Jim suggested he was merely "riding the hot hand", but Smith's palms had hardly been frost-bitten. Prior to the injury, Smith was enjoying the best year of his career – completing more than 70% of his passes and posting the fifth-highest passer rating (104.1) across all starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Kaepernick, though, offered greater dynamism – providing as great a threat running the ball as he did when throwing it. He has showcased that versatility perfectly in San Francisco's two playoff games to date, rushing for 181 yards and two touchdowns against the Green Bay Packers, then completing 76% of his passes operating primarily out of the pocket against Atlanta.
'That thrill of victory – there's nothing like it'
Those moves have thrust both men even further into the limelight, even if they would prefer to stay out of it. As kids they used to compete so relentlessly that at one point they wound up putting tape down the middle of the room to make clear who had the right to stand in any given spot. These days, though, their bond is too close for either man to relish the idea of dashing their brother's dreams.
It was John who prevailed when they met in that regular season game in November 2011 – the Ravens winning 16-6 in Baltimore. That was no make-or-break match-up; both teams reached the playoffs. But for a man as competitive as Jim, any loss feels like the end of the world.
Jack and Jackie had been watching from a suite at the stadium, and when the game finished they went down to the Ravens' locker-room. "We opened the door and everywhere was the excitement of victory," Jack recalled this week. "There were guys jumping up and down, the smile on John's face. They were just ecstatic, and that thrill of victory – there is nothing like it. That's when you realise you're not needed here.
We walked across the hall… and opened up a couple of doors and finally saw Jim all by himself in this room, just a table and a chair. He was still in his coaching outfit, sitting with his head in his hands. You looked into his eyes and realised this was where you were needed as a parent.
On Sunday night, when the game has finished and the confetti has fallen, Jack and Jackie will make a similar journey down from their seats at the Louisiana Superdome. This time, they say they will leave one son to celebrate the biggest night of his coaching life and go directly to console the brother whose greatest dreams have been shattered.
