Jim, John and father Jack (Getty Images)
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Little Brother will try to beat Big Brother in the Super Bowl with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. And Big Brother will try to beat Little Brother with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
Because, you see, Big Brother John Harbaugh and Little Brother Jim Harbaugh have lived by those words hammered into them at an early age by their father, Jack.
“OK, men, grab your lunchboxes and attack this day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind,” he would say.
Mission accomplished.
Little Brother will try to beat Big Brother’s brains in when his 49ers face off against the Ravens in Super Bowl XLVII, the first time brothers coach against each other in a Super Bowl, and Big Brother will try to beat Little Brother’s brains in.
But all the spoils will not belong to the victor on the night of Feb. 3. Because a part of the winner will mourn for the loser. Because when you are talking about the Harbaugh boys, you are talking about brotherly love. Only for those three hours with the world watching will they not be rooting for each other. Because the 49ers and Ravens take on the personality of their respective coaches, this one looms more as Super Brawl XLVII.
“You want them to be competitive, I want them to understand that every day is a fistfight in life,” Jack once told Yahoo! “You’ve got to battle and you’re going to get knocked on your can, but you’re going to get back up if you’re competitive.”
So this was what Jim said one day after he was repeatedly knocked on his can as quarterback of the Bears: “Look, I’m not gonna change my style just to survive a season. You’re born, you play, you coach, you die.”
John was a mere 170 pounds when he began playing defensive back at Miami of Ohio before a knee injury ended that dream. It should have surprised no one the brothers became football coaches: Jack coached football for 19 years at Western Michigan and Western Kentucky, and worked at Michigan under Bo Schembechler.
John, 50, is 15 months older and several inches shorter than Jim. John is considered the more cerebral of the two, Jim considered the more maniacal and animated on the sideline. But they are clearly cut from the same cloth.
They grew up in a modest three-bedroom home in Ann Arbor, Mich., and shared a room until John left for college. Jim didn’t have many friends growing up, and he wondered why.
“He was one of the world’s greatest daydreamers,” Jack once said of Jim. “He’d spend hours throwing a tennis ball against the back wall of the grocery store. When he got home we’d say, ‘Where have you been?’ and he’d say, ‘Doubleheader against the Cleveland Indians. I pitched both ends. We won ’em both.’ ”
They would turn their home into a playground — tennis-ball basketball shot at a coat-hanger rim or tackle football on their knees. Jim could throw a football over a towering Colorado spruce nearby; John could not. One year, after John climbed a church bell tower, Jim had to do it, but could not. He had a fear of heights.
“School officials had to get John to scale the tower one more time to talk his little brother down,” the Catholic Review wrote.
John loved ringing the bells at Mass as an altar boy. But he was not exactly a goody two-shoes, and applauds the nuns who reinforced accountability.
“After he clapped erasers on the walls, one punished him by making him write a sentence hundreds of times on the chalkboard,” the Catholic Review wrote. “Another made him work as a janitor for two weeks after he scaled a church tower so he could clang the bell.”
And you didn’t necessarily want Jim pitching to you. He was a hard thrower who didn’t always know where the ball was going, and that’s how he ended up plunking a classmate, according to the San Jose Mercury News.
“She dropped the bat and was crying, and her mom came running out,” Jim recalled, gleefully recreating the role of the angry, finger-pointing mother. “She told me, ‘You’re such a bully. You’re horrible. They shouldn’t let you play.’ ”
Jim, then maybe 10 or 11, already feisty, stood his ground.
“I was like, ‘She was crowding the plate. They shouldn’t let her crowd the plate like that,’ ” he said. “She was a nice girl. But she didn’t play baseball after that.”
Loyalty, sacrifice and compassion are important to both brothers. John anonymously fed the homeless one Thanksgiving. Jim brought his team to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before a Redskins game.
Jim had a postgame-handshake run-in with Lions coach Jim Schwartz, and John had one with the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin. When Jim played for the Colts, he confronted Jim Kelly at a hotel after the former Bills quarterback charged Harbaugh had overdramatized his injuries. Jim fractured a bone in his passing hand in the alleged scuffle.
“If I’d done nothing, I’d feel a lot worse than I do now,” Little Brother said. “You’ve got to be able to look yourself in the mirror. I can do that now.”
On Super Sunday, his mirror image will be coaching the other team.
Yesterday, Jim said: “I think it’s a blessing and a curse. The curse part would be the talk of two brothers playing in the Super Bowl and what that takes away from the players in the game.”
John: “Is it really going to be written about? It’s not exactly like Churchill or Roosevelt or anything. It’s pretty cool, but that’s as far as it goes.”
Their younger sister Joani’s husband, Indiana basketball coach Tom Crean, wrote on Twitter: “One incredible family who put the care, well-being and love for each other at the forefront, like most families do.”
Jack’s coaching advice to his sons forever has been: “Get ahead, stay ahead.”
The family credo: “Who’s got it better than us? Nooooobody!”
That has made its way inside the 49ers post-game locker room.
Their mother won’t know which way to turn. Before the Ravens beat the 49ers 16-6 last Thanksgiving, Jackie Harbaugh said: “I can’t root for one or the other. If it would end in a tie, I would be the happiest person in the world.”
Super Bowls cannot end in a tie. Oh, brother.
steve.serby@nypost.com