Most of John Harbaugh's fondest childhood memories revolve around football.
Playing in a pole vault sand pit next to the football field at an Ohio high school where his father, Jack, was putting the team through its summer practices. Being taped to the goal posts — along with his brother, Jim — by players at Michigan when their father was a member of legendary Wolverines coach Bo Schembechler's staff.
Todd Haley has similar recollections.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, where his father, Dick, was player personal director for the Steelers during their run of four Super Bowl championships in the 1970s, Haley often watched tape of college players his father was scouting, spent his summers in various roles at training camp in Latrobe and, when he was old enough, helped move the chains at Three Rivers Stadium.
It is only natural that the third-year Ravens coach and the second-year coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, whose teams will meet in a wild-card playoff game Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, followed their fathers. Harbaugh and Haley were simply going into the family business.
Because coaches tend to work 18-hour days and some even don't leave the office a few nights a week while honing strategy for the next game, their professional pursuits and personal lives meld — the lines blurred by their wives bringing the kids over for dinner or a game of two-hand touch on the team's practice fields.
"Because there are so many hours, if the coach allows the kids and the wives to come around to be a part of it, then it becomes part of your family experience," Harbaugh, 48, said Wednesday before practice in Owings Mills. "If not, maybe you tend to run away from it a little more because you might be a little bit resentful [of] not being included, not being around your dad. A lot of marriages break up, like any profession. I was always around, and was a part of it."
Harbaugh and Haley, in pursuit of this year's Super Bowl championship, are among a handful of NFL coaches who began as wide-eyed progenies, including Bill Belichick, the coach of the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots, as well as New York Jets coach Rex Ryan and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer.
Ryan and his twin brother, Rob, followed their father, Buddy, an assistant coach on two Super Bowl champions, the 1968 Jets and 1985 Chicago Bears, and later head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals. Schottenheimer followed his father, Marty, who coached four NFL teams. Belichick spent much of his childhood in Annapolis, where his father, Steve, was a longtime assistant coach at Navy.
For Harbaugh and Haley, the memories are not just of an endless life of games and practices.
Harbaugh recalls the way his brother, who Friday left Stanford to become the San Francisco 49ers' coach, used to squirrel away the wristbands Michigan players gave them, write the jersey number of All-America quarterback Rick Leach on them, and sell them at school for a dollar apiece.
"Rick Leach must have had a thousand wristbands," John Harbaugh said, laughing at the memory.
Given the accomplishments of the Harbaugh brothers — John has taken the Ravens to their third straight playoff appearance and a 12-4 record this season; Jim brought Stanford to national prominence and a blowout win over Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl — John Harbaugh said it has been an exciting time for his family.
"I think it's a big deal for all of us," he said. "I'm proud of Jim for what he's done, and my dad and mom were down there, cousins were down there, I was the only one who wasn't down there. I'm kind of disappointed about that. They won a bowl game; now we've got to take steps to win a bowl game."
Asked whether he was surprised that he and his brother are doing the same thing as their father, Harbaugh said: "Probably if you know anything about coaching, you'd be surprised a little bit. But we're doing OK."
Jack Harbaugh, who went from Michigan to become head coach at Western Michigan and later was an assistant athletic director at Marquette, said he always figured his boys would follow him into the business. Even his daughter, Joanie, is married to Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean.
While the elder Harbaugh recalled Jim saying during his career as an All-America quarterback at Michigan that he wanted to coach after playing in the NFL, the future wasn't as clear for John.
After John Harbaugh finished his playing career at Miami of Ohio, there was a brief conversation at the dinner table one night during which Jackie Harbaugh suggested that her son think about a career in politics, starting with law school.
It didn't last long.
"He said he thought he wanted to give coaching a try, and that's when he came to work for me at Western Michigan," Jack Harbaugh recalled.
