Jim Harbaugh, the man who has taken 5 different teams as a head coach from San Diego to the Chargers, from laughingstock to legit contenders, leaving nothing but winning records. He asked his father, Jack, a legendary coach himself, “When do you know it’s time to stop coaching?” Most people might consider family, health, or maybe even a bucket list. Not a Harbaugh. 

“You coach as long as you possibly can until you cannot do one more script,” his father responded. “You can’t walk out on the field for one more practice or do one more game plan. That’s when you know you should coach for two more years. When you get to that point, give it two more years.”

As Jim would later joke about his own retelling, “My delivery wasn’t near as good as my dad’s on that.” Jim’s stats? a 57-25-1 NFL record and a 115-46 college mark, not a bad coach, not a great coach, he’s the ‘greatest’, according to Colin Cowherd.

“He’s never failed; he’s 5-for-5,” Cowherd said. “He’s taken over five messes. They’re all very good by Year 2, some by Year 1.” That’s the real rub. The numbers are almost comically good: a 69.3% winning percentage in the NFL and a 71.4% winning percentage in college.

He took a San Francisco 49ers team that hadn’t made the playoffs since 2002 and got them to a Super Bowl game. Took a Michigan squad that was 5-7 the year before he arrived and turned them into a national champion. He becomes the team’s very soul as we can witness with the Chargers conquering with a 2-0 record as we ramp up to W3 (with pressure mounting on Herbert to maintain). And that soul-building? That’s a family business, forged over decades.

The Harbaugh legacy

His father, Jack, retired with a career college coaching record of 116 wins, 95 losses, and 3 ties, a quiet, professional legacy that laid the groundwork for his sons’ historic runs. Cowherd calls Jim a “soul of a program.” 

Match-ups against his brother John, the Ravens’ head honcho (Jim seems to be leapfrogging ahead this time), are always a treat. Back in Super Bowl XLVII, the emotional toll was so heavy, mother Jackie leaned over to Commissioner Roger Goodell and asked, “Is there any way this can end in a tie?”

You could feel that sentiment echo from miles away. John Harbaugh, for his part, put it bluntly: “These NFL games are just fights, man.”  It’s a harsh, unyielding truth of the game, in stark contrast to the beautiful origin story of their parents’ love. Jack and Jackie, a cheerleader and a QB, fell for each other at Bowling Green University in 1957.

Their first date as a married couple wasn’t a candlelit dinner but a Cleveland Browns game. “What the hell are you doing here?” their friends ribbed them as they sat in the nosebleeds, on a budget too tight for a real honeymoon. And yet, 63 years later, that memory is what came rushing back to Jim on the sideline, just before his Chargers played in Cleveland.

“I caught myself right before the game started getting super nostalgic,” the Chargers coach said. “The story I’ve heard maybe 50 times about Mom and Dad’s honeymoon. After the national anthem, that’s what I was picturing. I looked into the upper decks and how my dad described walking up the aisle and seeing some of the coaches who were making sport of it, saying, ‘You cheap son of a gun! Great honeymoon, Harbaugh!’” Love that, as Jim puts it, has been a source of “joy” for him, his brother, and their sister. That’s their love for coaching, too.

The man who’s never failed, the coach who turns messes into Michelin Stars, isn’t just working a job. He’s living a mission, one passed down from his father, and one fueled by his parents’ love. That “enthusiasm unknown to mankind? It’s real.” It’s not just a cute saying or a marketing slogan. It’s a way of life. The drive that makes you coach for two more years, even when you feel like you can’t do one more script. It’s what makes you look up into the upper deck of a stadium and see not just fans, but the entire history of your family. It’s what gives a program its soul.