SANTA CLARA – Jim Harbaugh’s father, Jack Harbaugh, was the guest of honor at today’s 49er press conference.
He sat with his legs crossed and watched his son with a smile on his face. His face was beaming with pride.
His face looks different than Jim’s, though. Jim is all jaw and chin. He pulls his 49er cap down low so the bottom half of his face stands out. Jack has a wider face and bigger cheeks and a big smile.
He spoke at length about his admiration for Jim as a coach. He told some stories about coaching with his son, both at the University of San Diego and at Stanford. And he told me his version of Fred von Appen’s story I passed on to you a month ago, the one about Jack getting into a tussle 30 years ago with Stanford’s basketball coach, Dick Dibiaso.
Here are selected quotes from Jack’s informal interview. I had to omit certain sections, like where Jim got the idea to give every player a blue-collar shirt. That was top-secret, off-the record information.
As Jack says, “Loose lips sink ships.”
Q: What’s the story with Jim’s whistle?
JACK HARBAUGH: I probably shouldn’t give this out, but back in the seven years I worked in Michigan with Bo (Schembechler), Bo was the master of the whistle. The end of practice whistle is different than the other whistles. It’s different in volume. It’s kind of a looooong, and then a couple shorts, and then a REAL HIGH LONG. That pretty much means practice is over, and I think the players have it down because when they heard that, they all started to move to stretch. So it’s not just a whistle, it’s the patterns that you use in the whistles. I think that goes back to Bo Schembechler.
Q: They used to use a horn out here.
JACK HARBAUGH: That’s modern football. The whistle is a whistle. The whistle’s been around since Knute Rockne. Back, back, way back.
Q: What’s your evaluation of Jim as a coach?
JACK HARBAUGH: I did it for 43 years, and I’m talking about both John and Jim, and I can honestly, honestly say this about them. When I go out and watch, they’ll come in afterwards and they’ll say, “What’d you think?” I’m speechless. To watch them and all the work – and it’s not just work. Work sounds like it’s something you’re lifting or moving around, it’s the love and the passion they have for it, and it’s obvious. I’m just in awe. I wish in those 43 years that I could have watched them somewhere along the way. I’m sure it would have made me a better coach, just to be able to observe them and take from them a little bit with how it relates to what I was doing.
Q: How do John and Jim approach the game differently?
JACK HARBAUGH: Not much. The thing about it is, everybody tries to say that John is cerebral and Jim is competitive, I guess it the word. They’re very much alike. John is every bit as competitive as Jim is, and Jim has every bit of the depth in seeing things and working through that John. They’re much more alike than they are different.
Q: I’m sure you watched a lot of his Stanford practices. Are these practices similar?
JACK HARBAUGH: The way they scheme, the practices, the practice formats are very much the same as they had at Stanford. Jim is really an excellent teacher, and I think to be a good coach you have to be a good teacher. And it’s not just teaching – you learn too, and I think Jim is open to ideas. He’s open to coaches’ ideas. He’s open to suggestions from the players. There’s a tremendous give and take. It’s not, “I’m the coach and you’re the player.” I think he tries to develop a level where there’s some back and forth and give and take, and he’s very open to that, which, again, I envy, because I don’t think I near had that quality that he is.
Q: Were you as hands-on as Jim is in practice? He’ll throw passes and he’ll run routes.
JACK HARBAUGH: I didn’t throw any passes. If you ever watched me throw you’d know why. I couldn’t do it very well. But Jim enjoys it – it’s fun for him, and I think the players like to see it. A guy jumps in there and gets his hands dirty. I remember at Stanford one time, it was kind of funny. I don’t think it was Luck, I think it was before Andrew got there, but Jim was going to show this player how he could throw. He threw an out route right on the money, and then he threw an interception and the players were pounding the ground shouting, “Jim Harbaugh threw an interception!” Jim could not allow that. He said: “I threw that intentionally. I wanted to see if that defensive back had good hands.” He turned it around. He wasn’t going to fall on that sword.
Q: Can you tell if he’s any more amped up for this first game on Sunday?
JACK HARBAUGH: In the 43 years I did it, we changed jobs a lot. We had about 14 or 15 jobs during my coaching career. That first game – it doesn’t matter if you’ve been here one year or you’ve been here five years, that first game is one that you lay awake. Saturday night you don’t get much sleep. All you’re thinking about is all the different things that could happen. And then when you walk out there on the field you’re just thinking, “Please, allow nothing to have slipped through the cracks. We don’t want to be surprised by anything.” That first game of the season is – we played in a couple playoff games, and I don’t even think those games had the same feel.
Q: So you say he stays pretty cool during the game?
JACK HARBAUGH: That’s been his modus operandi. He’s been a good poker player.
Q: Are you going to be at the Thanksgiving game (49ers vs. Ravens, Harbaugh vs. Harbaugh)?
JACK HARBAUGH: No, no. We talked about that. This is about them, and we want them to enjoy it from center stage. We’re going to find a nice, dark basement somewhere with no lights and maybe a couple Bud Lights. Is that the sponsor here?
Q: It’s actually Coors.
JACK HARBAUGH: A couple Coors (laughs).
Q: Do they try to pry you for information about the other team?
JACK HARBAUGH: No. Loose lips sink ships.
Q: Jim has been a head coach now for seven years. How far does Jim The Coach have to go to catch up with Jack The Coach?
JACK HARBAUGH: Jim passed me a long time ago, and when I first found that out was back in San Diego his first year. He only had three coaches, and he asked me (to coach). I was the Associate Athletic Director at Marquette, and I took a four month leave of absence to go to San Diego to coach with him. I was a running backs coach. I was there about a day before I realized that he had more knowledge of football than me. I was amazed. The way he dealt with the coaches and the players, I just kind of sat back and enjoyed the whole thing. I realized at that point in time that he had left me in his wake a long time ago.
Q: Any more stories?
JACK HARBAUGH: Toby Gerhart, first time I met him as a coach, I said, “Toby, I’m your running backs coach and I’m going to ask a favor of you. I’m going to be here for three weeks. I have no desire to come back after those three weeks to coach, but here’s my thing. Do not allow me to get yelled at by the head coach. (Laughs). And here’s how you can do that: Don’t fumble the ball, and don’t miss any protections where somebody’s coming free – Andrew (Luck) wasn’t playing then. Don’t let anybody come free where the quarterback gets hit. Because I know one thing, if either one of those two things happen, the first thing he’s going to do, he’s going to turn to me and he’s going to yell at me. I was kind of joking in a way, but Toby had a straight face and he said, “Coach, don’t worry, I’ve got you covered (More laughs).”
ME: I was talking to Fred von Appen a few weeks ago about you, and he told me that about 30 years ago when you coached at Stanford, you got into a tussle with the basketball coach. Do you remember that day?
JACK HARBAUGH: What happened was we had our defensive meetings over there (in Maples Pavilion), and we had a couple players a couple of the defensive guys who were a little mouthy. So we came into our meeting room, and these guys on the way in had been disruptive to the basketball coach’s practice. They disrupted his practice. So then he was mad, and he came charging into the meeting, and he wanted to yell at me. It was not a good situation, so what I said to him was, “Hey, we can discuss this some other place. This is not good. It’s not good for you. It’s not good for me. But he would have nothing of it, I mean he wanted, he wanted to…(laughs) So, finally I kind of said, “Come on! (He puts his hands on my shoulders and gently shakes me from side to side.) We’ve got to go outside and talk about this! It wasn’t really a tussle. That’s the way I remember the story and I’m sticking with it.
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