When Kyle Whittingham was hired by the University of Michigan, it was universally lauded as a very good hire. Given the circumstances of Sherrone Moore’s abrupt removal from the position, Michigan was behind the eight ball and had to make a quick hire, and landing a future college football Hall-of-Fame coach was regarded as a great option. Whittingham was routinely called the “adult in the room,” but now nine games into his tenure, everything has been a disaster.
Today’s discussion question: what
happened?
Certain things that have happened have been within the norm for a Whittingham-led team. For example, he had a reputation at Utah for delegating anything and everything. He trusted his coordinators, sometimes to a fault. That includes this year, as Whittingham hired Jay Hill to coach the defense and Jason Beck to coach the offense with very little intervention. Case in point: Whittingham refused to overrule any of Beck’s play calls, even the atrocious play action pass on 3rd-and-goal against Indiana.
Whittingham also had a reputation as an even-keeled type of coach. Similar to Dusty May, he preached to never get too high following wins and never get too low following losses. Unfortunately, this has led to a severe lack of urgency out of Whittingham. He has routinely preached it’s not time to panic, but for a program like Michigan, having four losses is absolutely reason to panic.
Other things have certainly been out of the norm since he got here. Whittingham has shown a disdain for the traditions of the program. Before the season even started, he went out of his way to say he doesn’t hate Ohio State. He also lost both of Michigan’s trophy games this season against Minnesota and Michigan State, specifically calling the MSU game “their Super Bowl” and then not having his team show up. Most recently, Whittingham responded to a question about motivating his team down the stretch by asking the media if there are any trophy games left.
One media gaffe is one thing, but Whittingham has repeatedly made mistakes in interviews over and over again this season, which is uncharacteristic.
The single-most surprising failure with Whittingham has been his general disinterest. He nearly always has his microphone on his headset flipped up above his head during games. When shown by television cameras, he’s rarely speaking to anyone. There are even times where he doesn’t join the team huddle during timeouts. While that style works for some coaches, this approach combined with his refusal to fire Beck until far too late, his avoidance of calling plays, and the undisciplined nature of this team makes you utter the question: what does Whittingham actually do?
While there’s no single thing that has led to the demise of the Whittingham era at Michigan, it has become blindingly obvious this isn’t a good fit. The lights seem too bright, the rivalries too intense, and the media too detail-oriented for Whittingham.
With that, we want to know what you place most of the blame on. Should Michigan never have hired Whittingham? If not, who else should they have targeted? What needed to go differently for the Whittingham experiment to work? Will he be back next season? Let us know down in the comments.
