For Harbaugh, a goal reached

Teammates, relatives say plan to lead started at young age

By Mike Klingaman | Sun reporter

January 20, 2008

When John Harbaugh told his mother of his career choice, she wept.

"Mom, I'm going to give coaching a chance," said Harbaugh, who'd just finished college with a political science degree.

Jackie Harbaugh tried to stay calm. "Are you sure you don't want to go to law school?" she asked, lip aquiver.

He was sure.

Twenty-four years later, as he was introduced yesterday as the Ravens' new head coach, he fielded questions with aplomb. Then he posed for pictures with family, including Jackie, who harked back to that day in 1984 when her son set his life in motion.

"He would have made a great politician," his mother said yesterday. "He's honest and fair, and he communicates well."

Coaching attributes, all.

Given his gene pool, how could Harbaugh not have picked football? His father, Jack, was a lifelong college coach; brother Jim was a quarterback for the Ravens and other NFL teams. Jackie Harbaugh was a cheerleader in high school, where she dated the team's star, Tom Matte, who went on to play for the Baltimore Colts.

Growing up in Ann Arbor, Mich., the Harbaugh kids hung around practice at the University of Michigan, where their dad was an assistant coach.

"They were gym rats," Jack Harbaugh said of his sons, born 15 months apart. "Jim [the younger] would be outside throwing, and John would be talking to Bo [Schembechler, the head coach], gathering information."

John, then 12, was routinely the victim of team pranks.

"Once I got taped to the goal post; another time I was stuffed in a locker," Harbaugh said. "Who could have asked for a better childhood?"

At home, the boys were typical sibling rivals. Through high school, they shared a bedroom in the family's smallish home and were always tussling about.

"They'd be upstairs wrestling and I'd pound on the ceiling shouting, 'TAKE IT OUSIDE OR I'M COMING UP THERE!' " Jack Harbaugh said.

Mother Harbaugh just shook her head. "I do wish I'd had headphones to block out all their noise," she said.

One winter, the boys made a primitive basket from a coat hanger, hung threads from it and played one-on-one with a Nerf ball in the basement.

'Rational, cerebral'

"John and Jim battled over everything, down to who'd get the last piece of meat at the dinner table," their father said.

A favorite trick: When family portraits were taken, the shorter of the boys would wait until the last second to stand on his tiptoes, thereby looking taller than his brother.

"John did the same thing again last week, in photographs at Jim's wedding," Jack Harbaugh said.

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For Harbaugh, a goal reached

Teammates, relatives say plan to lead started at young age

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Teammates, relatives say plan to lead started at young age

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