INDIANAPOLIS --- If you think the AFC Championship will be weird and awkward between Colts defensive end Arthur Jones and younger brother and Patriots defensive end Chandler Jones like it is for the Harbaughs or Mannings when they play each other, you're kidding yourself. It's on like Donkey Kong.
Sunday will be the second time Arthur and Chandler have met in the AFC Championship, the first in 2012 when Art's Ravens went into Foxborough and beat the Patriots 28-13. The eldest brother will try to do it again in his first season in Indianapolis.
"I know the first time I played him it was really stressful. I was more focused on playing against him," said Arthur Jones after practice Wednesday. "After playing him a third, fourth time, I won't even notice he's out there, until after the game. This one's for everything."
Jones said he would send his parents Colts jerseys in hopes of swaying them to support his team over Chandler's Patriots and isn't worried about New England fans harassing his parents because middle brother and UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jon "Bones" Jones will be with them.
The competition between Art and Chandler though goes back to their childhoods, of course, with all three brothers growing up sleeping in the same room.
"Yeah, very competitive. If it's the last cookie, last piece of chicken, whatever. We're wrestling or fighting. We put a lot of holes in the wall growing up," Art remembered. "We're paying our parents back now."
But Mom and Dad had to come to that bedroom on more than one occasion to straighten things out, in an era when video game systems only had two controllers. That didn't work out well between the three Jones brothers.
"Video game controllers, if the light switch was going to be on or off, what time we were going to sleep," Art joked of the nightly competition between the young Jones brothers. "Things would get ugly."
So who won those little brawls? The oldest brother, naturally.
"I still win. I'm the older brother. Absolutely," said Art. So how did all three brothers become famous professional athletes? "It's a small town. There's nothing else to do but tip cows. It was either that or sports."
As for the Jones brothers' parents, they are like royalty in their hometown of Endicott, New York as well, especially after both Art and Chandler stayed close to home to play college football at Syracuse. Now, even more so this week again with two of their sons squaring off in the AFC Championship. There hasn't been a night this week where Camille and Arthur Jones Jr. haven't been on the local news.
For their father, he's excited one of them will get to go to Super Bowl XLIX and remembers the feeling when Art won it all with Baltimore in 2012.
"I've never been to heaven, but if it's anything like heaven, it is with all that (confetti) coming down," Arthur Jones Jr. told WBNG-TV this week, remembering what it was watching his oldest son in 2012 and knowing he's going again this year. "It's a win-win situation. Win or lose, you still get to go. It's like the bull. You can get this (horn) or that (horn).
Arthur Jr. expressed great pride in his sons as Jones Bowl II awaits, as did their mother.
"Do you realize I'm the only parent in America knowing I'm going to the Super Bowl?" asked Camille. "I'm going to have a child in the Super Bowl. So I feel very special."
"You should see them at the UFC events and football games," Art said. "Some people recognize them before they recognize me. It's awesome. They love it. They eat it up. It's a blessing for them to be in that situation. We're going to keep working hard to keep making their name great."
Art and Chandler already have. The Jones family name is indeed in good hands.
