Why Kyle Whittingham took Michigan football job sight unseen

He could’ve bent to Utah’s contract demands at the end of another 10-win season, and been comfortable finishing his career in Salt Lake City. In the safe, comfortable known with the successful program he built, and the full life he lived outside it.But he has never chosen easy over difficult, and he sure as hell wasn’t starting now. So he’s not a Michigan Man, so what? The guy who last fit that mold won a national title, and left two NCAA investigations in his wake before escaping for the NFL.

Make no mistake, Michigan needs a no-frills sheriff as much as it needs a balls-to-the-wall football coach. And before you believe Whittingham, 66, was brought in to do the dirty work to set up the next guy, think about his obsessive workout routine.

The weightlifting isn’t as prevalent as it once was, but the cardio and core work of sit-ups and pushups is still going strong. Everything, he says — while staring deep into another potential soul to convert — revolves around core strength and stretching.

Every single day, except Sundays, since July 1, 2008. Even the Almighty took a day off every seventh.Whittingham woke up that July morning nearly two decades ago, and felt like a bag of rocks. Needed to change, needed to challenge himself.

So the streak began and the next thing you know, six months passed and Utah finished 13-0 in his fourth season, the first of those eight double-digit win seasons. Which leads him back to preaching and converting. There is no coincidence in life, he says. There’s work, and there’s the payoff. Fit body, calm mind, and a deep passion for what makes you tick. All of it, from powdery slopes to unchartered trails to an overloaded backside blitz, feeds the wolf.

That’s how you do more with less than any other coach in the game over the past two decades.         “I feel like I’m 18,” Whittingham said. “As you get older in life, you lose flexibility. You’re all stoved up, and you can’t, you know, move. That’s a problem.”

And who knows if he’s talking the laws of physiology, or coaching in the ever-changing college football landscape? But it doesn’t really matter at this point.

“The expectations here are high, and they should be,” Whittingham said. “But I adapt to change well. So here we go, new chapter.”

Players win games

They filed into the Big House earlier this month for the first public sight of Whittingham’s Michigan team. The last of 15 spring practices, the Maize and Blue game — with all of 13 points scored — was about as exciting as an enema.Not long after the event that was more introduction than finished product, Whittingham took to the podium at his postgame news conference and finally explained what he had been telling his team since Day 1. Players win games. Full stop.

Coaches will develop and put players in the right position to reach their ceilings. But nothing gets done, championships aren’t won, without players at the point.

“If you’ve got your top 10% of your team that works their butt off and trains hard, everyone else seems to follow suit,” Whittingham said. “Set the bar, demand everyone else live up to it.”

A continent away and on vacation in Europe, former Utah All-American linebacker Stevenson Sylvester heard what Whittingham said and the world moved to 2007, the year before Utah won a school-record 13 games and embarrassed big, bad Alabama in the Sugar Bowl to cap the unbeaten season. Beat them so badly, in fact, that Tide coach Nick Saban, of all people, created what would become the typical postseason refrain after SEC losses: The game didn’t mean anything.

Only it meant everything for the 12 months of development at Utah, from the time the Utes beat Navy in the Poinsettia Bowl in December of 2007 — and Sylvester saw Whittingham sprinting at him through the mass of postgame humanity on the field. The Utes had lost 14 games in the three seasons since Whittingham replaced Urban Meyer, including the last two to bitter rival BYU.

It wasn’t exactly playing out how everyone thought it would, and Whittingham finally embraced an uneasy truth: Coaching wasn’t all about control. So he shook hands with then-Navy coach Ken Niamatalolo, and raced to find Sylvester.

“He grabbed me and says, ‘This team is yours. We go as far as you go.’ And he runs off,” Sylvester said. “I was 20 years old. I’m thinking, why the hell did he come to me and say that?”

This, everyone, is the key to all those years of winning less with more — and the tantalizing idea of Whittingham now doing more with more at Michigan. Players win games. Like Fernando Mendoza’s touchdown scramble against Miami, or Stetson Bennett’s postseason run from 2021-22 at Georgia. Or yes, the Michigan defense in 2023.

At some point, every championship team becomes a group that controls and governs itself on and off the field. A nucleus of elite, talented players and leadership that transcends the moment. It’s corny and it’s hokey — and it’s absolutely undeniable.

There may be no better example than the 2024 Ohio State team that lost at home to double-digit underdog Michigan, and got up from that unthinkable gut punch to produce a masterful championship run of four double-digit victories over the Nos. 1, 5, 7 and 9th-ranked teams in the College Football Playoff.

That’s why Whittingham was holed up in an Orlando hotel for three days last December, conducting 1-on-1 interviews with every Michigan player during Citrus Bowl preparations. He had to know what he was walking into.

So much can shape today’s player, and not only had this team dealt with the very public undoing of its head coach off the field, some also endured the wild national championship ride of 2023. The NCAA investigations, the suspension of coach Jim Harbaugh for six games, and the drama of the illegal future scouting scheme.

“These guys have been through a lot, and I didn’t know if I was going to get a bunch of entitled players,” Whittingham said. “I was really impressed with their character, their priorities. These guys know where they’re going in life after football. They get it. Good players, good people. That’s a dangerous combination.”

New world, new challenge

This is still a team that won nine games last season. Still a team that, despite unthinkably poor decisions of the past from ill-equipped former coach Sherrone Moore, and from a brilliant former coach and Prodigal Son, was one win last season from reaching the CFP.

All that instability and uncertainty, and a group of players that overcame the odds in spite of it. If you still don’t think players win games, look at the world that has evolved over the past five years of NIL and free player movement.College football was a play away last season from an Indiana vs. Ole Miss national championship game. The historical armpit of college football, vs. the SEC tomato can of the modern era. It’s as unthinkable as it is remarkable to this very moment.

The process to winning big is simplistic: money, players, coaching.

So when the guy who lived and thrived with less at Utah first walked into the shining city on the hill that is the Schembechler Hall football facility on this historic campus, he was just like any other schlub who saw the palace for the time. Speechless.

“I loved my time at Utah, and I won’t say anything bad about it," Whittingham said. "But there were certain things we just didn’t have.”

When he’s asked how many times he was told “no” at Utah, Whittingham doesn’t blink and says matter-of-factly, “Hundreds.”

Michigan makes double what Utah makes within the Big Ten media rights deal. Michigan has a deep alumni base of committed donors. Michigan has the new ace in the hole of college football: the engaged and committed billionaire.And just to be clear, Cody Campbell (Texas Tech), Todd Graves (LSU), Lex Wexner (Ohio State) and Mark Cuban (Indiana) aren’t getting into a who’s got more argument with Larry Ellison.

More: Q&A: Michigan AD Warde Manuel on Sherrone Moore saga, job security

Within the first month of his arrival at Michigan, Whittingham and strength and conditioning coach Doug Elisaia — Whittingham’s right-hand man at Utah for all 21 seasons — walked into the recently renovated weight room in Schembechler Hall. The largest and most impressive training center in all of college football.

And the damn thing didn’t fit.

Not the bones of it, but the way it was laid out within the cavernous 32,000 square feet. Elisaia uses metabolic, trench-specific strength training, and he’s the most important piece to the program returning to winning through strength and toughness. Or as Harbaugh routinely declared: with character and cruelty.

The same place where tougher, smarter and better prepared turned all of those two- and three-star recruits at Utah into four- and five-star execution on Saturdays. “It didn’t fit and it wasn’t going to be cheap to make it work for us,” Elisaia said. “I told Kyle what it would take, he says let me get back to you. And I’m thinking, here we go.”

Elisaia had been down this road for two decades, the path of wish we could but we just can’t — even though the proof was in the annual performance. It’s what so many programs outside the revenue rich Big Ten and SEC go through every single season.

A day later, Elisaia got his answer: Whatever it takes.

Elisaia and his family built a life in Utah, had everything they needed and could’ve ever wanted. His four kids were off to college, and he and his wife, Leata, had done the heavy lifting and were primed to reap the benefits of all that hard work off the field in a place they loved. Then Whittingham asked him to walk away from it all, pack up everything and get uncomfortable again to right battleship Michigan.

“Kyle comes back and gives me the yes, and I’m thinking, OK, we’ve made the right move,” Elisaia said. “This is going to work.”

Right coach, right place

Not everything is as easy as it looks. Michigan ended spring drills, and already there’s controversy. Not within the rebuild, but the widely passionate fan base.

Quarterback Bryce Underwood struggled in limited time, and the quarterback with the multimillion dollar NIL deal and no quarterback coach during his first season under Moore — yes, that’s not a misprint — looked like the second-best quarterback on the field. It also didn’t help that the other quarterback, freshman Tommy Carr, is the grandson of former coach and Michigan legend Lloyd Carr. You can see where this is headed.

But true to form, Whittingham didn’t flinch. This is about player development, about molding the 55 new players on the roster with those returning who were a game away from the CFP. About getting the right pieces in the right place and everyone on the same page.

Underwood made big strides in the spring with new offensive coordinator — and quarterbacks coach — Jason Beck. The little things most don’t see (mechanics, footwork, increased comfort and knowledge within the offense) that become the big things when it’s 3rd-and-9 on the road, and you can barely hear yourself think in Happy Valley. But that doesn’t mean Carr, who enrolled early at Michigan and has been on campus all of four months, can’t push Underwood. Nobody’s job is safe. Not any player, not Whittingham’s. It’s the way he has coached his entire career.

Knew the challenge at Utah, and knows it now at Michigan. Wanted the challenge. Wanted to once again get comfortable being uncomfortable.

“I’m in the facility at 10 at night, and I walk by the quarterback room, and there’s Tommy Carr watching film all by himself,” Whittingham said. “He’s completely immersed in his development as far as trying to get better.”

Feed the wolf, everyone.

Then find out what happens when more with less becomes more with more.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.

This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Why Kyle Whittingham took Michigan Wolverines job sight unseen