Las Vegas oddsmakers are taking bets on whether the Harbaugh brothers will hug or handshake at the start of the Super Bowl.
The Harbowl. The Super Baugh. The Harshake, The Hugbaugh…. what will it be?
John and Jim Harbaugh, separated by just 15 months, will become the first brothers ever to meet in the Super Bowl as coaches.
The odds of that happening are too remote to even fathom. Think winning Powerball while being struck by lightning.
The proud sons of Jack and Jackie Harbaugh held a joint news conference talking about themselves, their parents, their teams and a little Shakespeare.
“St. Crispin’s Day speech, he’s got it memorized, it’s unbelievable,” John, the elder, said of Jim, his far-from little brother.
For three hours, these actual brothers will be foes. Jim’s 49ers are favored by a field goal over John’s Ravens, but most see the game as a coin flip.
As far as competitive sprits are concerned, it’s probably a toss-up. But that shared trait didn’t come from their football coaching father, who won a national championship at Western Kentucky. It is their mother who has the most fight, they said.
“She competes like a maniac,” said Jim, whose histrionics on the sidelines when things go awry are legendary. “She always believed in us, which was most important to me.”
The teams are even, and the coaches seem that way too, even if John called his brother the best in the game. But the Ravens’ coach does have a secret weapon: Jim’s son Jay, who is a coaching intern for Baltimore.
“He’s far better than even anticipated,” John Harbaugh said. “That’ll tip the scale. That’ll be our edge.”
Now Jim’s son… will he hug his father after the game?
