Once upon a time, a new Michigan football head coach was an assistant to the head coach at Ohio State. History doesn’t always repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.
In 1969, a former Ohio State graduate who coached under Woody Hayes was hired by then-athletic director Don Canham to take over the struggling Michigan State football program, things were going so well in the Bo Schembechler era that even now the program is having a hard time shaking off. After all, Jim Harbaugh played for Schembler. His predecessor, Brady Hoke, was an assistant to Lloyd Carr, who had been an assistant to Schembechler.
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Now, Michigan has a former Urban Meyer assistant coach, albeit from his time at Utah State, in Kyle Whittingham as the team’s 22nd head coach. No one is more excited than Meyer himself.
Meyer appeared on Wake Up Barstool to share with Dave Portnoy why he was excited about Whittingham taking the job and more about the conversations they had before he did so.
“The Kyle Whittingham thing, he called me one day and he said, ‘Hey, what do you think?'” Meyer said. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ You retired at Utah, and we started talking about the Wolverines. My comment was, Dave, I think you know this, yes, there’s rivalry, there’s hatred, but there’s never — you name someone who respects that school more than I do, I’d probably argue with you. I respect that a lot. Bo Schembechler is a friend. The reason we beat them (expletive) so hard is because we respect them so much every day, every day of our career.
“So when Kyle told me that, I said, ‘Kyle, this is a no-brainer. You can win a national championship there.’ It’s a tough job. I mean, he’s going to be scrutinized like never before, never scrutinized in Utah. This is a blue-blood program. You can get any player you want. You have elite academics. Northern schools have challenges recruiting, but that’s why Wolverine nation should be ecstatic: He’s a tough cat. That’s a tough guy to deal with, man.
“You’re going to see the Wolverines are still the same Wolverines they were a few years ago. They’re a scrimmage team, tackle the ball really well, play tough defense, and they control the line of scrimmage on offense. That’s who he is. He’s adapted well to a new era of players. That’s what he was when he was my defensive coordinator, he was determined, had high expectations, but he never talked down to him — never. The players respected him and that was his No. 1 quality.”
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Whittingham was introduced Sunday in Orlando and said he and Meyer remain close. He said he also goes to him for advice on personnel decisions. So, with Ohio State still very committed to Meyer, it will be interesting to see how he transitions now that he has a protégé in Ann Arbor.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Urban Meyer says Kyle Whittingham can win championship at Michigan
