It has now been close to a week since the Michigan Wolverines fired head football coach Sherrone Moore, and the search for a new coach continues. A lot of names have been floated around as potential candidates, but Michigan hasn’t found its guy just yet.
It’s unclear what the timeline is like in terms of finding a new coach, but the goal is to have it wrapped up before the transfer portal opens up on Jan. 2. According to a report from On3’s Pete Nakos ($), Michigan Athletics Director Warde Manuel
is willing to “open up the checkbook” to secure the best possible hire for the program, and that includes potentially having to buy out contracts.
According to Nakos, there are six names coming up the most related to Michigan’s head coaching vacancy — Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer, Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham, Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz, Washington head coach Jedd Fisch, Los Angeles Chargers defensive coordinator/former Michigan defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, and a name that hasn’t been discussed up until now, Louisville head coach Jeff Brohm.
Michigan did hire a firm for the coaching search, as TurnkeyZRG has been brought in to help the university find the next person to lead the football program. It sounds like there is a good chance one of those six guys will be the next head coach for Michigan, with most of the buzz so far being around DeBoer and Dillingham. Both have been asked about the speculation, and both have expressed a desire to stay at their current spot. Still, that doesn’t mean there isn’t something going on behind the scenes the public doesn’t know about.
Fisch has also been a popular candidate among the fanbase, although he has more doubters than DeBoer and Dillingham. Fisch was on the staff under Jim Harbaugh from 2015-16, and he did a great job turning around Arizona before helping fully reset Washington after the program’s run to the National Championship.
There hasn’t been as much buzz surrounding Drinkwitz, Brohm and Minter, and if it ends up being Drinkwitz or Brohm, a good chunk of the fan base will likely be disappointed. At this point, everything is still up in the air, so we’ll just have to wait and see who ends up being Michigan’s next leader.
