Jim Harbaugh started questioning the call immediately, but his dad took the high road.
Jack Harbaugh (perhaps you heard, the father of the Super Bowl coaches), said he wasn’t going to insert himself into the debate about the fourth-down no-call on a pass toward Michael Crabtree which ended the 49ers’ Super Bowl chances.
“Well I’m not going there as you can imagine. I refuse to get in that debate,” Jack Harbaugh said during an interview with ESPNChicago radio (via SportsRadioInterviews.com). “It comes down to a play like that; that’s maybe the play that will be most remembered, but in a game like that that goes for 60 minutes, there are so many plays that are going to swing it.
“For me it’s the great pride in John, the five years that he’s been in the NFL and the journey that he took to get there, from the graduate assistant getting no pay at all. The working all the different places that he worked, me and Jackie were filled with tremendous pride. And then, of course, Jim took a little different route with the 15 years in the NFL and then took the University of San Diego job, he worked himself to where he is, and to be down 28-6 and find a way to rally to get to that position on the goal line, so much pride in what he’s been able to do with the San Francisco 49ers team, and it didn’t just happen in this game, it’s been a journey over the last two years in what he’s been able to accomplish.”
The Harbaugh parents successfully walked the tightrope between sons in the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl.
And Jack’s probably old enough and wise enough to know that a similar no-call got Jim into the Super Bowl to begin with, so complaining about it now would be in poor taste.