Tagged: Jack Harbaugh

Former WKU football coach Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie, knew all along they would have a son coach the winning Super Bowl team.

They also knew they'd have a son coach the losing team. That's what happens when your oldest son, John, coaches Baltimore, and your youngest son, Jim, leads the 49ers.

ESPN's Greg Garber has this great look at what it was like for the Harbaugh parents following Baltimore's win over San Francisco.

"In my 43 years as a coach, that was the most difficult game ever," Jack Harbaugh told Garber in the minutes following the big game.

Fans of the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens have good reason to be nervous as their teams prepare for Super Bowl Sunday. But nobody will have a more conflicted set of emotions Sunday night than former WKU football coach Jack Harbaugh and his wife, Jackie.

The Harbaugh's sons are the two head coaches of 49ers and Ravens, meaning one child is guaranteed to win the year's biggest game, and another is guaranteed to lose.

Last fall the Harbaugh parents visited WKU when the school honored the Jack Harbaugh-led 2002 WKU football team that won the 1-AA NCAA national championship. WKU Public Radio interviewed Coach Harbaugh, and asked him about the prospects of a Super Bowl matchup between his sons' teams.

Jack Harbaugh told us what it was like the previous time the 49ers and Ravens played, on Thanksgiving night in 2011.

History will be made next Sunday when Jim and John Harbaugh lead their teams into Super Bowl XLVII. The game will mark the first time ever two brothers have coached in the same Super Bowl.

The Harbaugh boys have a strong connection to WKU. Their father, Jack, earned a reputation as a great coach and even better person when he was head coach of the WKU Hilltoppers from 1989-2002, winning the 1-AA NCAA national championship in his final season.

CNNSI.com has published a wonderful set of old black-and-white photographs of the Harbaugh boys growing up, alongside Jack and mother Jackie.