Jack Harbaugh dealt with wins and losses for many years as an assistant football coach at Michigan, Pittsburgh and Stanford and a head coach at Western Kentucky. He will be the first to admit that coaches somtimes bang their heads against the wall and take their losses home with them.

Despite this, his two sons Jim and John are in the coaching profession, and his daughter is married to men's basketball coach Tom Crean.

"They see the valleys," said Harbaugh, Marquette's associate athletic director. "When I was out at Stanford as defensive coordinator, we played Arizona State whose quarterback at the time was Mike Pagel and they came out and ripped us apart.

"I came home and I couldn't talk, I was in shock and the kids see that. For them to see that as the lowest of the downs, and still say 'That's something I want to do.' I marvel at that."

Coaching football ever since his children were born, Jack's days consisted of leaving the house before it was light out and coming home after it was dark. He said it was his wife Jackie who introduced their children to the coaching lifestyle.

"She would bring the kids out to practice when they were just in strollers," he said. "She always involved the kids. She would sit around the field with them for an hour and a half watching practice. They were around it and both Jackie and I never said, 'Because we're in athletics you have to be in them.' The idea was if sports aren't what you want, we're right behind you no matter what."

But his children were interested in athletics. Jim spent 15 seasons in the NFL as a quarterback and two years as a quality control coach with the Oakland Raiders. Now he is in his second season as the head coach at the University of San Diego. Last year Jack went to USD as their runningbacks' coach to help Jim out.

"I sat back and marveled at the presence and the expertise that Jim brought to the team with very little coaching experience," Jack said. "I was amazed at what he was able to do in that year."

Jack described his football methodology as "three yards and a cloud of dust": football in its most original form of run, run and run. Jim's 15 years as a quarterback in the NFL gives him the itch to throw the ball more in the intermediate passing game of the West Coast Offense. The two might differ in terms of football strategy but Jack did notice some similarities between his and Jim's coaching styles.

"You notice it more in the things they say," Jack said. "At Michigan we used to say, 'stymie the run' and I heard Jim use that in a meeting once. Another is, 'Morale is to the physical as three is to one.' I heard Jim say that in a meeting once and I jumped up and said Jim, at least say, 'My dad used to say morale is to the physical as three is to one.'"