CANTON, Ohio — This town is deeply meaningful to the Harbaugh family, and not just because Jim Harbaugh will coach the Los Angeles Chargers in the Hall of Fame game on Thursday night, seven years after brother John Harbaugh did the same with the Baltimore Ravens.

But the Harbaugh legacy in Canton predates the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which opened its doors in 1963.

This is where newlywed Jack Harbaugh got his coaching start in 1961, after his playing career at Bowling Green State University, and three days at Buffalo Bills training camp, had come to an end.

The Ohio River Valley is known as the "Cradle of Coaches," and for good reason. It produced such coaching legends as Paul Brown, Don Shula, Chuck Noll, Bo Schembechler, Lou Holtz and Nick Saban.

The region also birthed the career of one Jack Harbaugh, storyteller supreme, whose initial foray into coaching was more of a crash course.

Actually, Harbaugh didn't see the crash, but he heard the commotion.

The incident happened during summer two-a-day practices for Canton McKinley High. Harbaugh, a junior high coach, was conscripted to work with the varsity team, and sometimes that was little more than babysitting. Between practices one day, a rambunctious group of players had commandeered a trailer and rode it down a hill behind Fawcett Stadium. With a tremendous clatter, the makeshift stagecoach got the speed wobbles like a wonky grocery cart and flipped over on a turn, ejecting its rowdy riders.

No one was seriously hurt, but there was a lot of panic, especially among Harbaugh and the other young coaches who were in charge while the older coaches had left for their favorite lunch spot.

"They told us, 'We gave you one job! One job!'" Harbaugh said. "I went home that night and told [wife] Jackie, 'Don't answer the phone. It could be [coach] Pete Ankney firing me.'"

The equipment cart was unhinged. Ankney was not. He clearly saw the coaching potential in Harbaugh, who had to work his way up from the ground floor.

That meant starting with junior high players, who at times could be unruly beyond their years.

There was a fullback who was ruled ineligible before the first game when coaches learned he was significantly older than his teammates. Harbaugh instructed him to return his full uniform. The player brought everything back but his school-issued cleats, so the coach sent him back for those.

The aged-out kid returned sometime later and stood on a bridge near practice. He held out his cleats and dangled them over a creek, shouting to Harbaugh that if he wanted them he'd have to swim for them. Kerplunk — he dropped them into the water.

Harbaugh hopped a fence and gave chase, but pulled up when the wayward wild child started swinging a metal dog chain over his head like a deranged cowboy, the whip inching ever closer to the coach's face.

The standoff lasted a few moments until the kid backed into a curb and fell over, allowing Harbaugh a chance to pounce on him and — while showing mercy to the kid — confiscate the chain. Jack kept that chain in a jar for decades to come.

"I remember seeing that chain, and I've heard the story probably a hundred times," Jim said. "I'm just really proud of my dad for the way he handled that."

Then there was the player — let's call him "Frank" — who couldn't stop swearing on the field. Harbaugh warned him on multiple occasions, telling him he wouldn't play unless he toned down his language. That didn't work.

"He lets out a high-velocity word, and I say, 'That's it, you're not playing,'" said Harbaugh, who even 60 years later asked that the kid's actual name be kept in confidence.

When Harbaugh turned his back, foul-mouthed Frank swung his helmet and clocked the coach over the top of the head. That staggered Harbaugh, who showed restraint in grabbing the player by the shoulder pads and growling, "You're done."

Frank was a good player and a popular one, and the next day, only seven kids showed up to practice. The one-day boycott worked for the day, as the coach didn't have enough bodies to run drills. But a grateful Harbaugh did tell the seven players who showed, "I'll never forget you."

Years later, while coaching at Bowling Green, Harbaugh ran into one of those unforgettable seven. To his sheepish embarrassment, the coach indeed forgot him and had to be reintroduced.

Harbaugh remembered him as a pudgy, 5-foot-7 eighth grader. The youngster had transformed into a sculpted superhero at 6-3 and 230 pounds.

"It was a reminder to me that you don't forget players," the coach said. "Especially those players that you've brought in and believe in you and trust in you."

Sometimes junior high kids were... well, just kids.

Harbaugh recalls one timid youngster who never made it onto the field. In the season finale, he got his chance but declined to take it.

"He goes, 'Coach I can't go in,'" Harbaugh said. "I asked him why not and he said, 'One, I've got a headache. And two, I've got to pee.' I told him, 'Maybe you'd just better stay here.'"

As for Harbaugh, he got his big break at the end of the Canton McKinley season when the varsity coach asked him to help the players prepare for the monumental matchup against powerhouse Massillon.

When the irrepressibly enthusiastic Harbaugh showed up to coach, he was handed a uniform. He would be playing scout quarterback for the week.

"They kicked the living snot out of me," he recalled with a laugh. "Four days of no mercy."

Harbaugh was still feeling the effects of those grueling practices the week after the Canton McKinley-Massillon game — which Massillon won, 7-6 — when he and Jackie were married the following weekend.

And the Harbaugh kids would hear the story for decades to come.

"Their marriage, their coaching career, the ups and downs, the two of them have been the rock in every story," Jim said of his parents. "It was just Ward and June Cleaver doing the right thing time after time. You just feel blessed and as good as you can feel to have parents like Jack and Jackie Harbaugh."

Canton isn't just a finish line. It's a starting gate too.

____

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.