Kyle Whittingham is Michigan's next head coach. What does it mean? What comes next?
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Michigan football’s big Christmas gift came a little late this year — but only by a few hours. As Dec. 25 was wrapping up, Chris Balas over at TheWolverine.com reported that Michigan’s coaching search was picking up steam and that Kyle Whittingham was emerging as a pretty clear favorite. By the time people woke up on Thursday morning, all of the national outlets had matched that tenor, saying Whittingham was the clear focus of the search and that a hire could be imminent. By lunch time, basically all media outlets had reported it was a done deal. Official word finally dropped around 10:20 eastern time Thursday night: Kyle Whittingham is officially Michigan’s 22nd head football coach.
The money quote from Whittingham as part of the official release:
“We are honored to lead the outstanding student-athletes, coaches, and staff who represent Michigan Football each day. Michigan is synonymous with tradition and excellence — both on the field and beyond — and our entire program is committed to upholding those values while striving for greatness together. My family and I are thrilled to join the University of Michigan community, and we look forward to helping our players grow, develop, and reach their highest potential — on the gridiron, in the classroom, and as leaders. It’s a privilege to be part of something that inspires pride in every Wolverine fan. Go Blue!”
So there you have it. After a two-plus week period of uncertainty filled with lots of twists and turns, Michigan football has its next head coach. And it just so happens to be a future College Football Hall-of-Famer.
If you’re a premium subscriber to the newsletter and you’ve been reading coverage of the search, you know that after Alabama put together an improbable comeback against Oklahoma and Kenny Dillingham signed a new contract with Arizona State during a brutal 24-hour period for Michigan’s coaching search when it came to its top targets, I put together a “what’s next” piece that reassessed the candidates after those two unfortunate speed bumps in the process. Whittingham is who I landed on as my “best of the rest” candidate. If you missed it, here’s the bulk of the Whittingham nuggets from that piece, including background on his career, pros of a potential move and cons of a potential move:
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Depending on who you ask, the new top tier of candidates to replace Moore is some combination of:
Jeff Brohm (Louisville)
Jedd Fisch (Washington)
Eli Drinkwitz (Missouri)
Kyle Whittingham (formerly of Utah)
There’s some indication that Brohm may have a slight leg up over the others. But to me, if that’s your true Mount Rushmore of new “top candidates,” the one that makes the most sense to me is Whittingham. Unlike Michigan’s previous top option(s), though, Whittingham comes with a slew of question marks — just like the others he’s apparently sharing a tier with. Let’s dig into what Whittingham looks like as a candidate, along with a look at how the other options would shake out when it comes to my personal pecking order.
Whittingham is a decorated and well-respected head coach. He’s won multiple National Coach Of The Year Awards across different decades. He could technically be considered part of the Urban Meyer coaching tree, since he was Meyer’s defensive coordinator during Utah’s undefeated 2004 season that led to Meyer getting the Florida job and the two coaching together as “co-coaches” in the Fiesta Bowl. Once Meyer moved on to Florida in 2005, Whittingham took the permanent Utah head coaching job (after also getting the chance to become the head coach at his alma mater at BYU). From that point on, Whittingham has coached at Utah for 21 straight seasons until he stepped away just last week. Those 21 years saw Whittingham lead the Utes as a member of three different conferences: first the Mountain West, then the Pac-12 and most recently the Big 12. Utah won conference championships in both the Mountain West and Pac 12 and was in the mix for the Big 12 title for much of this past season, where Utah went 10-2. In those 21 seasons as Utah’s head coach, the Utes have had just three losing seasons, with all three of those losing seasons being one win away from being .500. In 2008, Utah finished 13-0 and was No. 2 in the year-end AP poll. The Utes have had seven different 10+ win seasons under Whittingham.
It’s no surprised he’s long been revered as one of college football’s best coaches. Here’s where Whittingham ranked on various “college football coach rankings” lists heading into this season:
A-to-Z Sports: No. 7
ESPN: No. 9
CBS Sports: No. 11
College Football News: No. 12
Sporting News: No. 13
The Athletic: No. 13
Trying to cheerlead Whittingham as my new favorite for the Michigan job isn’t just about his resume, though. If this was a resume competition, he would’ve been far ahead of Kenny Dillingham and comfortably ahead of Kalen DeBoer, too. This is about fit. And while there are some things that make fit for this opening a little iffy, there are some aspects of Whittingham and his current situation that make him particularly appealing to me when measuring him up against other coaches that are in the mix for this spot.
Some pros:
Proven winner: Let’s start with the obvious. The guy wins. And he’s done so for three decades now. Whittingham was in the top 5 nationally of most wins among active coaches before he stepped away from Utah. Three losing seasons in 21 seasons while coaching at a team that wasn’t exactly rich in resources or surrounded by fertile recruiting grounds is super impressive.
Integrity: Earlier this week, Michigan interim president Domenico Grasso released a video that updated the public on the school’s investigation into the Athletic Department. As part of that video, he also outlined what the school would prioritize in a candidate to replace Sherrone Moore, saying: “We intend to hire an individual who can and will instill that spirit and will represent the highest values that our university holds dear. We will hire an individual who is of the highest moral character, and who will serve as a role model and respected leader for the entire football program, and who will, with dignity and integrity, be a fierce competitor.” Whittingham certainly fits that description, and has a long track record of doing things the right way and earning the respect of others across the college football world.
Strong developer of talent: As mentioned above, Utah isn’t exactly in the most talent-rich area of the country. With that in mind, Whittingham isn’t stringing together his winning seasons with loaded recruiting classes full of five-star talent. He’s earned his reputation as a great developer of talent. Only once in his 21 years as Utah’s head coach have the Utes had a top-20 recruiting class, and that was the No. 19 class a few years back that just snuck into the top 20. While some may look at that as a negative — he’s not considered an elite recruiter — if I’m Michigan and I’m given the choice of bringing in a proven recruiter or a proven developer, I’m taking the latter every single time. That’s because coming to Michigan will unlock a lot of resources that will make recruiting easier. But you can’t really teach a coach to develop. He either has it or he doesn’t. And Whittingham has it.
Age: This last one would have been a con if I was looking at Whittingham in a vacuum. And I know others would consider it a negative, too. But hear me out on this one. When talking about this specific opening at this specific time in the process, Whittingham being a 66-year-old free agent feels more like a feature than a bug to me. Whiffing on Dillingham and (presumably) DeBoer (more on that in a little bit, though) puts Michigan in a really weird spot. You’re now dealing with a lower tier of options in your candidate pool and you’re operating from a place of less leverage. So you’ll likely need to make more concessions to attract a coach you were hoping wouldn’t even be an option. So if — God forbid — you get to a situation where you’re trying to poach someone like Eli Drinkwitz from Missouri and he’s already making 8 figures annually, you’re likely going to have to give him a pretty lengthy term to entice him to leave, on top of an uncomfortably large contract amount. In the current college football landscape, buyouts are getting more and more out of control and the cost of making a bad hire is rising by the year. Michigan might be able to avoid that with someone like Whittingham, who is already near the twilight of his career. A 3-4 year deal could be mutually agreed upon and make sense for both sides, making Whittingham more of a bridge coach and giving Michigan the opportunity to either develop a younger, longer-term coach-in-waiting under Whittingham, or identifying someone elsewhere who could be a longer-term solution.
Some cons:
No Midwest ties: All 21 years of Whittingham’s head coaching career has been at Utah. When you include his time as an assistant, his entire 41(!)-year coaching career has taken place at either Utah or Idaho. I don’t care that he’s not a Michigan Man (honestly, it feels like the right time to not be prioritizing past Michigan ties), but having familiarity with the Midwest feels like a pretty important prerequisite to coach in the Big Ten, even if the new landscape of the conference does include the West.
What would his staff look like? I’m a little worried what Whittingham’s staff would look like — particularly at the coordinator level. Morgan Scalley has been Whittingham’s long-time defensive coordinator and one of the more respected defensive minds in college football. The prospect of him coming along with Whittingham would be enticing. But he’s already been installed as Whittingham’s replacement in Utah, and a lot of the defensive staffers that one might expect Whittingham to bring with him feel locked in to Scalley’s new staff, with some of them receiving title bumps as a part of that domino effect. Offensively, Jason Beck joined on as Utah’s offensive coordinator this year, bringing QB Devon Dampier with him from New Mexico, where they both turned heads in 2024 in their respective roles. Would a year together at Utah be enough for Beck and Whittingham to develop a rapport to make them a package deal in Ann Arbor? Or would Whittingham have to break in two unfamiliar coordinators from scratch? It’s not a sign that it couldn’t work. But candidates that have a coordinator or two already lined up as part of the deal are a plus, and that’s not really a thing with Whittingham.
Is he a fit in the modern age of college football? The timing of Whittingham’s departure from Utah doesn’t feel particularly coincidental. Directly on the heels of Utah signing a first-of-its-kind private equity deal that would infuse roughly a half billion (yes, that’s billion — with a “b”) into its athletic department, Whittingham announced he was leaving Utah. Many reported it as a retirement, which felt like a fairly safe assumption given his age. But Whittingham has made it clear he considers himself a free agent, not a retiree, and it feels like him stepping away from Utah felt a bit like not wanting to deal with a lot of the new nonsense that’s seeping in to college football. Taking a stand against private equity may be a selling point to Michigan decision-makers — along with USC, Michigan stood up against the Big Ten’s collective flirtation with private equity a few weeks ago, and it seems like he’s (rightfully) in alignment with that opposition. But I worry a bit that Whittingham might be having some thoughts similar to Nick Saban when the long-time Alabama coach opted to walk away with the game — an “it’s just not worth the headache”-type vibe. That’s a feeling I certainly can’t blame anyone for having. But … I want the leader of my college football program to be OK with dealing with all the nonsense that comes with the job, because all of Michigan’s rivals are being led by people who put up with the nonsense, too.
Would installing him as head coach push out Bryce Underwood? I’ll start this last section off with this caveat: You can’t choose or exclude a candidate solely because of how it may impact one individual athlete on your current roster. A coaching hire will have far more important long-term impacts — both positively or negatively — than a single athlete will have. But Whittingham’s style of play and what it may mean for Bryce Underwood does feel like it’s a part of the calculus that would need to go into a hiring decision like this. And it certainly doesn’t feel like a good fit. Whittingham’s teams have been far more run-heavy during his time as a head coach. In fact, the last Utah QB to ever get drafted (Alex Smith, who went No. 1 overall in the 2005 NFL Draft) was the last starting QB for the Utes before Whittingham took over, meaning he’s never had a QB drafted in his 21 years as a head coach. Don’t you think opposing coaches will be letting Underwood and his reps know that once the portal window opens on Jan. 2? For others, it could be a selling point — with Jordan Marshall, Savion Hiter and maybe even one more year of Justice Haynes, the Michigan running attack could be absolutely elite under a successful run-first coach like Whittingham. But major donors like the Ellisons stepped in because they wanted a more modern offense with a marquee QB, and bringing in someone like Whittingham could push out Underwood, and could also cause some tension with some big-money people who are (or maybe were) willing to invest heavily in Michigan’s success.
So yeah. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, and it’s far from a slam dunk (most coaching searches don’t yield slam dunks once you get past candidate No. 2 and through week No. 2). But if you think this con list is robust, just be glad I’m not doing a similar exercise with someone like Drinkwitz.
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I think a lot of that analysis still holds up a week later. But I also think some of the question marks in the “cons” section have a little more clarity as the Whittingham hire becomes official and he works toward building a staff.
Below the paywall jump, I’ll be combing through some of the cons on my initial write-up of Whittingham and seeing what they look like now, and what things may project to look like in Year 1 (and beyond) of the Kyle Whittingham era in Ann Arbor. I’ll also share some big-picture, final thoughts about Michigan’s coaching search as a whole and what comes next. Let’s dig in. 👇
