“Have a seat on my big fancy couch,” says Kyle Whittingham, the new Michigan football coach. It’s a huge office, befitting of a CEO, with a massive desk, multiple seating areas, lots of glass, shiny silver surfaces, and, of course, plenty of Michigan maize and blue, from the photographs on the walls to the shirt and cap on Whittingham’s healthy 6-foot frame.
But it’s the “fancy couch” comment that catches me, the kind of thing you say when you’re almost embarrassed by your rich surroundings. And that’s understandable. Because after 32 years of assistant and head coaching at Utah, in four different conferences and with a stadium capacity of 51,000, Whittingham is now less than a week away from his first game in charge of Michigan, the winningest
program in college football history, with a stadium that could swallow Utah’s twice and still have room for a few luxury boxes.
“Everything's bigger and more magnified,” he agrees. “It's a grander scale.”
“Does that energize you?” I ask.
“It does, yeah.” He beams like a kid. “It absolutely does.”
Anyone who thought Kyle Whittingham was slowing down should think again. He is 66 years old the way Brad Pitt is 62 years old: doesn’t look it, doesn’t act it, sure as heck doesn’t talk like it. He has a jut jaw, a full head of salt and pepper hair, a fast smile and a gleam in his blue eyes when he gets excited. He skis, he rides motor bikes, he works out every day and looks like he could still make a tackle or two, the way he did in his college and pro linebacker days.
He arrived in Ann Arbor like a missing puzzle piece, filling a hole left by the sudden and messy departure of Sherrone Moore, after Whittingham’s sudden and messy departure from Utah.
Although they took place 1,600 miles apart, there were parallels in the situations. The folks at Utah quietly wanted Whittingham to step aside for a younger coach, Morgan Scalley. And the folks at Michigan knew they had to shed Moore after his inappropriate relationship with a staffer and charges of home invasion, stalking and breaking and entering.
So the Utes replaced a coach in his 60s with one in his 40s, and Michigan replaced a coach in his 30s with one in his 60s.
Is everybody happy?
We’re about to find out.
Fresh intensity
But we can already say this. If Michigan under Moore was like a student driver weaving across a highway, Michigan under Whittingham projects to be a Mack truck plowing down the center lane. Quite frankly, the new man, whose Mormon faith prohibits him from smoking or drinking, has football, toughness and integrity all but oozing from his pores.
Here is the son of an NFL linebacker whose nickname was “Mad Dog,” a guy who, as a kid, moved every fall for nine years to wherever his dad was playing, a guy who can recall hanging in his father’s locker room with Roger Staubach and Tom Landry; a guy who, like his old man, played at Brigham Young, as did his three brothers; a guy who later, at Utah, hired his father to be an assistant coach; a guy who literally cannot recall wanting to do anything with his life that didn’t involve this game.
“Football was a part of me ever since I can remember,” he says. “Oftentimes I’d say, ‘What do I want to do? What do I want to do?' And it always came back to I want to stay in football, you know? Somehow. Some way. So when I was finished playing, I jumped right into coaching and didn't look back.”
In Utah, where Whittingham played and coached over six decades, he is as emblematic of college football as Bo Schembechler is in our state. And while he becomes only the second of the last six full-time U-M coaches not to be directly or indirectly connected to Schembechler (Rich Rodriguez was the other one), Whittingham says he actually grew up in awe of Bo and adds, somewhat surprisingly, that Michigan was his favorite college team.
“I was just enamored with everything that Michigan's about. The winged helmets are what first caught me as a kid," he said. "And the uniforms. I idolized Bo, but never had a chance to meet him. … [But] if anyone asked me what do you think the best job in the country is, I would always say Michigan.”
He now has it and works every day in a building that carries Bo’s name, something that, even after eight months in Ann Arbor, still makes Whittingham shake his head.
“It’s incredible. I say to myself, ‘Am I really here?' ”
He’s not the only one asking that question.
Timelines aligned
Let’s be honest. Many fans are still trying to wrap their heads around the dizzying state of the Wolverines. A year ago, Moore, who ended his first season with wins over Ohio State and Alabama, was solidly in charge of the team. Warde Manuel was solidly the athletic director. And five-star recruit Bryce Underwood was solidly the future at quarterback.
Today, Moore is gone in disgrace, Manuel agreed to leave at the end of the year, and Underwood is being scrutinized as possibly overhyped.
Enter Whittingham, a hoped-for anchor in the suddenly choppy waters. When he talks about what he learned from his father, he mentions “toughness” five times, along with integrity and “treating people the right way.” And in 21 years as head coach of the Utes, Whittingham had no NCAA violations, not even a whiff of bending rules.
Honestly, Michigan couldn’t have found a more stable boulder of Bo-like principles if they’d hired a bulldozer and gone digging.
What’s funny is, he all but fell in their lap.
Moore was fired by U-M last Dec. 10.
Whittingham stepped down from Utah on Dec. 12.
Two weeks later, he was hired by Michigan.
Now, about that whole thing. Whittingham admits he “would have stayed” in Salt Lake City, had he been able to work out a new contract. But Utah begrudgingly offered him only one year at less money than he wanted and made demands that he gradually cede control to the younger Scalley. Eventually, he stepped aside.
“I never wanted to be that guy that overstays his welcome,” he says. “We were very successful. Won 11 games [my] last year there.”
But you wanted to stay.
“I would have stayed. Yes, I would have stayed.”
Were the reports that came out about the differences between your agent’s requests and Utah’s offers accurate?
“That stuff was accurate. Yeah. Again, for several years prior, I did not want to be that guy that stayed too long. … I was there 21 years, but it was like I had jobs four new times. We went from the WAC to the Mountain West to the Pac-12 to the Big 12, and so we were ascending that whole time. So it's not like it was just stagnant. ...
“Had I forced the issue, I'm very confident I could have stayed on. But who wants to stay on when you got that feeling that, hey, [you’re] over overstaying your welcome?”
Whittingham insists that Michigan was one of just a handful of schools he would have considered. And what if none of them had offered him a job?
“I'm a skier. I ride motorcycles. I boat. I travel. I work out every day. I have no doubt in my mind I could completely fill up every day of retirement life because I like to do so many different things. I was content to do that if that's the direction things went.”
It didn’t.
Growing up in football
Here are a few items not quickly found in Kyle Whittingam’s bio.
His father, Fred, was adopted out of foster care when he was a baby. He met Kyle’s future mother, Nancy, at BYU, where she was a cheerleader and he played linebacker. When Fred transferred after one year to Cal Poly Tech, she followed him there. They married and Kyle was born during Fred’s sophomore season.
A year later, Fred suffered a concussion. It forced him to miss a road game against Bowling Green. After that game ended, the team plane, heading home to California, crashed shortly after takeoff, killing 16 players. It remains the second-deadliest incident in college football history.
“He hardly ever talked about it,” Whittingham says. “When he did, he just said, ‘I was lucky.’
As a kid, Kyle moved every fall, for nine straight years, to whatever NFL town his father was playing in and went to school there until Christmas − which meant he lived in Philadelphia (Eagles), Los Angeles (Rams), Boston (Patriots), New Orleans (Saints) and Dallas (Cowboys) − then he would return for the spring semester to the family home in Glendora, California.
“I think it toughened me up,” he says of the back-and-forth. “It gave me a chance to be adaptive, fit into different situations and circumstances, because you had to.”
Now – after 32 years in one place − he has to again. He takes over a team two years removed from a national championship but riddled with recent controversy, projected to have a crazy hard schedule this year, and preseason ranked at No. 16.
Good luck, right?
Be like Bo
When I mention to Whittingham that I knew Schembechler well and even wrote his autobiography, his eyes light up. And when I say that I think Bo would have liked him, he blinks as if it’s a bigger compliment than he deserves.
Here’s why I say it. Bo was big on principle. And while the Dr. Robert Anderson scandal has tarnished the idea, Bo often insisted the buck stopped with the head coach.
So does Whittingham.
“It stops right here, right in this office, with me. When coaches say it's something [they] didn't know about, you should have known about it. Can you know about every single little thing that goes on? Realistically, no. But you're still accountable. You still have to take accountability. You still have to be where the buck stops. And to me it's a lame excuse to say, 'I was unaware that that was going on this way’ because you should know. It's your program.”
These should be welcome words in Ann Arbor, where accountability and denial have been in question from Jim Harbaugh to Manuel to Moore to Connor Stalions.
Old-time Bo fans would also like Whittingham’s take on NIL money. He pulls no punches.
“I believe that this system is out of control. And it's obviously not sustainable. NIL goes up 20, 30, 40% a year in some years. ...
“We need a reset, and you've almost got to blow up the whole system and the whole structure.
“It's crazy. Whereas before it was, hey, come get a great education and win games, [now it’s] ‘OK, that's all fine and dandy, but these guys are offering me a quarter million more than you guys are, so I'm going there.’ NIL rules the roost in recruiting.”
Whittingham admits the size of Michigan’s NIL budget is a giant leap from what they had in Utah and will take some getting used to.
As will the traditional Michigan rivalries. He admits he was taken aback by the online reaction to his Big Ten media day comments that “hate is a strong word” when it comes to Ohio State, and that their coach, Ryan Day, was a good person.
The fervent Maize and Blue crowd went ballistic.
“Yeah, it kind of, not blindsided me, but it was like, wait a minute, I'm just supposed to turn on the switch and you know, all of a sudden, have animosity and hatred toward a guy? I don't. That's not who I am.”
And before the Michigan faithful take that as soft, they should remember that Schembechler and Woody Hayes, who really cemented this whole rivalry, loved each other the other 364 days a year.
Manufactured hate is silly. And silly is one thing Whittingham is not likely to be accused of.
How will they do?
Before we finish, I ask the two biggest questions U-M fans have going into the season. 1.) What kind of team are you looking to mold, and 2.) What’s the story with Bryce Underwood?
The answers:
“Our offense will be a more dynamic [than the old ‘’three yards and a cloud of dust” approach] and more diverse than that, but the starting point is still run the football. If you can run the football effectively, everything else opens up. And so, a football team that I'm the coach of, you're going to be able to run the ball. You're going to be able to defend the run. You're going to cover kicks.
“You do those three things, that show toughness and grit, that'll never be different under my watch. Also, limit mistakes. You can't win a game till you first not lose it. You’ve got to eliminate bad football.”
As for Underwood?
“Bryce was thrown into a very difficult situation last year for a number of reasons. I don't want to badmouth anything or anybody. But we feel that he has made a ton of progress since he started with Jason [Beck, the new offensive coordinator] back in January all through spring.
“Now in spring, you know, people watched the spring game and they say, ‘Where's the progress?’ Because he was still assimilating and digesting the offensive scheme and didn't feel completely comfortable going through his reads. But through a summer of working, and in fall camp, he is way ahead of where he's been ever since he's been at Michigan. Now, when the bullets fly in [a few] days, we'll find out exactly how much. But in my experience, you get to play pretty much like you practice, and he's practicing very well.”
So here we go. New season. New coach. A new chapter, really, but with overtones from the Bo/Mo/Lloyd days – toughness, age, experience, principles. He may have a fancy new couch, but it’s more about “fundamental” than “fancy” with this guy, and I’d be surprised if things didn’t calm down in Ann Arbor and return to the model where the coach does his job, the players play the games, and the news is about football.
That’s the most bankable prediction you can make about the Kyle Whittingham era. Given what’s gone on lately at Michigan, it ought to feel like a relief.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates on his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow @mitchalbom on x.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Mitch Albom: Kyle Whittingham represents fresh start Michigan needed
