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Jim Harbaugh Won a Game of Laser Tag by Systematically Hunting a 10-Year-Old

Dan Carson
Dec 19, 2014

Jim Harbaugh knows the world is a hard, cruel place.ย 

The weak perish, the strong survive, and all life forms bow before Darwinโ€™s immitigable statutes as they squirm to stave off extinction.

Harbaugh understands this. Itโ€™s why he celebrated his wedding by hunting down a child in a smoke-filled labyrinth.

MLive.comโ€™s Nick Baumgardner brings us the story of Harbaughโ€™s most dangerous game, which occurred during a bachelor party celebration.ย 

Baumgardner reports that the San Francisco 49ers coach took his buddies to play laser tag to coronate his second wedding. In the murky abyss of the laser arena, Harbaugh did two extremely Harbaugh-ian things.

First, he chose the name โ€œCaptain Comebackโ€ as his gamer handle, paying tribute to the nickname he earned during his playing days.ย 

Second, he found the other teamโ€™s weakest link and exploited it relentlessly. In this case, that unfortunate link was a 10-year-old child.

Harbaughโ€™s team won (of course), but the coachโ€™s youth-poaching strategy wasnโ€™t apparent until his friends analyzed the scatter plot of his game-high kills. They quickly noticed a pattern in the data.

โ€œAll his shots came against this 10-year-old kid,โ€ said Eric Bakhtiari, a former 49ers linebacker who had played under Harbaugh during his pro and college days. โ€œHe just sat there, hunting this 10-year-old kid so he could win.โ€

From Harbaughโ€™s perspective, the massacre is easy to justify. This child has none of his genetic material. It cannot carry on his lineage. Rather, the childโ€™s very existence threatens Harbaugh and his tribeโ€™s way of life and access to resources. Throw in the fact that this kid could one day grow up and challenge his reign as Laser Quest alpha male and itโ€™s almost as if Harbaugh had no other choice.ย 

Bakhtiari attributes his former coachโ€™s strategy to mad genius.

โ€œ(Heโ€™s crazy), but in the best way possible,โ€ Bakhtiari said. โ€œI mean, hey, Steve Jobs was crazy, too.โ€

If only Jobs were still with us today. He and Harbaugh could settle this nonexistent alpha male feud with a laser-tag battle on General Zaroffโ€™s island. Winner gets high score, loser gets fed to the hounds.

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