Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh and Baltimore Ravens head coach Jim Harbaugh are widely regarded as two of the best coaches in the NFL. They even squared off in Super Bowl 47, which was dubbed the “Harbaugh Bowl” since they became the first brothers to battle one another on football’s biggest stage.
But Jim and John wouldn’t be here today without their parents, Jackie and Jack. Here’s everything you need to know about the Harbaugh family and the brothers’ upbringing.
Get To Know Jackie and Jack Harbaugh
Jim and John are the sons of Jackie and Jack Harbaugh.
Jack and Jackie started dating while they were in college at Bowling Green State University. Jackie was a cheerleader, while Jack was a quarterback and defensive back on the football team. Jack recalled the first time they met in a biology class.
“Back in 1957 in that biology class, I looked down into row number one in that class and four years later, we were married,” Jack told BaltimoreRavens.com. “That was the decision that changed my life.”
The couple graduated in the spring of 1962. Jack received his B.S. degree in physical education and would later get an M.E. in health and physical education, while Jackie became a teacher.
In 1961, Jackie applied for the newly founded Peace Corps, and she was selected to join the inaugural group. She nearly accepted the invitation, but after talking it over with Jack, she ultimately declined. Instead, the couple got married, and John was born shortly after. If it wasn’t for Jackie’s change of heart, Jim and John wouldn’t be here today.
From the moment that Jack and Jackie got married, their life revolved around football. The day after their wedding, they went to an NFL game for their honeymoon.
“We got married on a Saturday,” Jack told the Canton Repository. “We stayed at a hotel in downtown Cleveland. The Browns had a deal where any coach in a 90-mile radius could get two free tickets. We had two of those tickets for our honeymoon at a Browns-Giants game.”
Today is their 63rd wedding anniversary, and they will once again celebrate with a football game: this time watching their sons face off on Monday Night Football.
Growing up, the family moved often because of Jack’s coaching career. While Jack, Jim, and John are known as great coaches, Jack describes his wife as the leader of the family.
“Thank God for moms,” Jack said. “Just go right back to Jackie. She was the head coach of them and still is. They’ve had me around, but she’s been around them 14, 15, 16 hours a day when they were growing up. … We’re just so blessed that Jackie’s with us, and she’s still the head coach of the Harbaugh family.”
Examining Jack Harbaugh’s Coaching Career
It’s easy to see where the brothers got their love of football, as their father played collegiately and then went on to become a terrific head coach.
Jack was born in Crestline, Ohio, and he was an excellent athlete. In high school, Jack lettered in football, baseball, and basketball. An all-state quarterback, he led Crestline High to conference championships as a junior and senior. He was a huge Cleveland Browns fan.
“The Browns were the greatest show in football in the 1950s,” Jack said. “My guy was Otto Graham.”
He played college football at Bowling Green, lettering three times as a defensive back and quarterback (while also lettering in baseball). Bowling Green was 24-3-2 throughout his time there, and they won the small college national championship during his junior season.
In 1961, the Buffalo Bills drafted Jack in the 25th round of the AFL Draft. However, as Jack described it: “I lasted about three days before getting cut. I came back home and had no prospects.” At that point, Jack made the transition to coaching.
After coaching at the high school level for several years, he served as an assistant coach at Morehead State, Bowling Green, and Iowa. From 1973 to 1979, he was Michigan’s defensive backs coach. Then, after a stint as Stanford’s defensive coordinator, he landed his first head-coaching gig at Western Michigan, where he coached from 1982 to 1986.
His longest-tenured job was with Western Kentucky, where he served as the Hilltoppers’ head coach from 1989 to 2002. He led the Hilltoppers to the Division I-AA national championship in 2002, and Western Kentucky was the only school to have a top-10 rushing attack every year from 1991 to 2002 (so you can see where his sons get their run-first approach). Harbaugh also had a stint as the athletic director at Marquette University.
After retiring from coaching in 2006 with a 116-95-3 record, he unretired twice to coach alongside his son, Jim. While Jim was at Stanford, he brought in his father to serve as the team’s running backs coach for the 2009 Sun Bowl (since Willie Taggart left the program to become Western Kentucky’s new head coach). Then, in 2023, Jack joined Michigan’s coaching staff as an assistant and won a CFP National Championship with his son.