Michigan

Kyle Whittingham is dreaming big for Michigan football; it’s doable

Published

3 weeks ago

March 24, 2026

Press Room

Kyle Whittingham is dreaming big for Michigan football; it’s doable

Kyle Whittingham is the new head coach of Michigan football following Sherrone Moore’s firing.
Whittingham believes the team can compete for a Big Ten championship in his first year without a rebuild.
Michigan still has many talented players, including quarterback Bryce Underwood and running back Savion Hiter.
The new coaching staff plans to implement a physical, run-heavy offense and a versatile, turnover-focused defense.

Each day Kyle Whittingham walks into Schembechler Hall, he is reminded of Michigan football’s tremendous power. The program he now leads possesses a rich tradition, abundant resources and immense brand recognition.

“I mean, it’s all here,” he said last week at the outset of spring practice.

A convincing case can be made that the Wolverines’ built-in advantages have diminished the impact of their own self-inflicted controversies, which stirred intense turmoil and caused reputational damage but did not lead to complete devastation. Even in the turbulent wake of former coach Sherrone Moore’s shocking firing this past December, college football’s winningest program weathered a destabilizing leadership change and remained relatively unscathed.

In this era of mass player movement, the Wolverines managed to retain many of their top contributors and the bulk of their 2026 signing class, which was ranked 11^th-best in the country by 247Sports. Whittingham, in fact, is so bullish about Michigan’s new crop of freshmen that he told reporters “a lot of those guys are going to help out right away.”

Following his awkward, bitter divorce from Utah – the school where he coached in some capacity for the past 32 years – the 66-year-old Whittingham understands that he landed in a fortunate situation at a place he calls “one of the pinnacles of college football.” It’s why he has already set his mind on achieving lofty goals in his first season in Ann Arbor.

“At Michigan,” Whittingham said, “I would say if you’re not thinking Big Ten championship every year, then something’s wrong.”

Whittingham has reason to believe he can completely bypass the rebuilding phase that usually accompanies a regime change and complete organizational reboot. The team he inherited, after all, won nine games and remained in contention for a College Football Playoff berth until halfway through the third quarter of a 27-9 loss to Ohio State in the regular-season finale.

It was a rather impressive achievement considering Michigan was led by Moore, a flawed, inexperienced coach who still seemed out of his depth in his second year in charge. There is reason to assume Whittingham is capable of producing even better results given that he is more seasoned and successful than his disgraced predecessor. Eight seasons with 10 or more victories during Whittingham’s 21-year tenure at Utah’s helm support that supposition. The Utes, Whittingham noted, were a “more of a development” program populated with lower-tier recruits.

Michigan is not that.

The Wolverines have a strong talent base loaded with players other elite programs coveted. Bryce Underwood, the team’s sophomore quarterback, was the top high school prospect in the 2025 class. Savion Hiter, a five-star freshman, was rated the No. 2 running back in the nation as a high school senior. They headline a large cohort of blue-chippers that dot a roster returning 63% of its production from last season, a share that is among the 20 largest in the country, according to ESPN. With 10 starters back, including seven on offense, the transition should be relatively smooth.

While defensive coordinator Jay Hill noted that that Whittingham and his new staff will have to build their “own identity” and a new “culture,” the football philosophy appears similar to the one Moore, and his mentor Jim Harbaugh, espoused.

Whittingham, just as they did, said he wants the Wolverines to be “physically tough” and control the line of scrimmage. In Whittingham’s final season at Utah, the Utes finished second in the country in rushing, averaging 266.3 yards per game on the ground. Much in the same way Michigan has done for years, they feature their tight ends in the passing game and rely on a healthy diet of play-action throws.

“They’ll pack it in and pound you and they’ll spread you out and throw it,” said Hill, who was BYU’s DC the past three seasons and matched wits with Michigan’s new OC Jason Beck last year, when he was at Utah.

Hill noted that the offense is versatile, much like his own defensive scheme, which he likened to the one Michigan ran under Jesse Minter during its run to a CFP championship in 2023. Minter’s system, which had NFL roots and included a menu of coverages, multiple fronts and packages of simulated pressures, was a huge success; it allowed the fewest points and yards per game in the country that year. Michigan also created the fourth-most takeaways. As Hill watched the Wolverines back then, he noted, “That defense looks just like us.”

BYU, under Hill, then began to resemble them in results. Over the past two years, the Cougars forced 53 turnovers, the fifth-highest total in the nation during that span.

The numbers, Hill said, show that his scheme “works.”

“We believe emphatically that it is the best system in the country,” he added.

Hill is eager to prove it. Much like his boss, he sees no point in tamping down expectations. A rebuild, he said, is not even a consideration because “no one puts up with that in today’s world.

“Do we expect to be good in Year 1?” Hill asked rhetorically. “Absolutely. Do we expect to be competing for championships? That’s why we came here.”

The program they now lead has seeded them with the confidence their goals can be accomplished in short order. While history has shown Michigan is not too big to fail, it’s understandable why anyone given ownership of this football Leviathan would think it is. As soon as he assumed control, Whittingham realized he was set up for success. Now, it’s his mission to achieve it.

It seems eminently possible he will, if he can make the right moves with all the quality pieces he has come to possess.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com.

Source link

Click to comment

Michigan

Max Bullough brings lineage and lessons for Michigan State defense

Published

3 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Press Room

Max Bullough brings lineage and lessons for Michigan State defense

East Lansing — It’s 6:30 a.m. but the energy is high inside Michigan State football’s practice facility as Max Bullough barks out orders to his group of linebackers who watch him with rapt attention. At 34 years old, the Traverse City native looks as though he could go through these drills himself. He probably wants to.

Now, the former two-time MSU captain Bullough returns to East Lansing. To the same stomping grounds where his grandfather Hank once plodded the sidelines for Duffy Daugherty. Where his father Shane once captained a team for George Perles. Where he and his brothers Riley and Byron each played for Mark Dantonio, including Max’s captaincy of the 2013 team that won a Big Ten championship and earned a ticket to the Rose Bowl.

A Rose Bowl he never got to play in.

With Bullough, it felt like a matter of when, and not if, a homecoming would occur on the sidelines. And with that reunion would come the inevitable question: Why did his career end a game early, suspended from the Rose Bowl his senior season?

“Yeah, you’ve been dying to ask that one,” Bullough said. “Here’s my answer to that one:

“That was 13 years ago, right. So my focus and my energy and my attention is on the 2026 Spartans, and my beautiful wife, Bailey, and my four boys Rocky, Teddy, Banks and Murphy. We’ll leave the past where the past is. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing moving forward, and so let’s talk about the 2026 Spartans.”

Now that that’s out of the way.

As much as Bullough doesn’t want to talk about the past, it’s what his very hire harkens back to. He’s here to help revive a storied program that means so much to him that he has “Spartans” tattooed across both arms. He gets to raise a family where his family has played and coached, and where his grandmother, Lou Ann Bullough, still gets to every Michigan State basketball game she can. What would it mean for his grandfather to know he came back to join the coaching ranks?

“I don’t know how much he would tell me or not. You never got that much out of him that way,” Bullough said. “But I think at the end of the day, I think it would mean a lot.”

The first thing you notice about Bullough is his intensity, especially for Michigan State football. At least that was the case for new head coach Pat Fitzgerald, who had Bullough wrap up the first team meeting of the year for a new group trying to rise above 4-8 mediocrity a year ago.

“I gave him 90 seconds, I think he went 15 minutes,” Fitzgerald said Feb. 4. “Getting to know Max through the evaluation process when I was putting the staff together, you could sense very quickly his pride — beyond the double bicep — for the Spartan football program, the state of Michigan, his time here, and what he wanted to bring back, and that was toughness.”

Bullough’s part in an illustrious past for this program — in four years he went 40-12 and captained the Spartans his junior and senior years, an honor that means a great deal to him — is a major cultural building block for a staff trying to reestablish principles of the era of Dantonio, who is around more often since Fitzgerald got the job. Thankfully it all worked out, Fitzgerald says.

“He’s got a bright future ahead of himself in his career, and we wanted to make sure,” Fitzgerald said, “coming here is obviously easy to say of course, he’d want to come home. But it also had to fit looking at his three-, five-, 10-year plan for his career.”

Bullough was brought in for the next two seasons on a contract paying him $750,000 per year. When he stepped on campus as an assistant coach was only the second time he’d stepped food on campus since he graduated. The other time was when he was an honorary captain in 2015.

“There’s a lot of new buildings, this whole place,” Bullough said. “That’s the question y’all should ask. This place looks completely different.”

In Bullough, though, there’s a connection to history that feels further and further following four straight losing seasons.

“He’s brought energy, brought enthusiasm. He brings a lineage,” defensive coordinator Joe Rossi said April 7. “He understands what it means to be a Spartan, not only him but his family. So it’s been awesome.”

As an understudy to Rossi, Bullough is listed as a co-defensive coordinator in addition to his role as linebackers coach. Not only does that free up Rossi to “roam” around practices and observe his entire defense (last season, Rossi filled that linebackers coach role), Bullough also gains experience for later in his coaching career that has been impressive through stops at Notre Dame and Alabama. He’s a riser, of whom coaches and players speak highly.

Playing for Mike Vrabel while with the Houston Texans watered the genetic coaching seed in Bullough. It was at Notre Dame that Bullough really fell in love with being a college coach.

“Once I was able to get to Notre Dame and have my own room,” Bullough said, “which is where the magic comes for me, like when you’re able to coach your own room and have your own guys. Like the connection that you’re able to build with guys that are this 18 to 22 years old, especially when we’re able to bring (our) own guys in. Watch them come in, watch them develop, and see what they turn into in terms of football players and in terms of men.”’

Men who make mistakes, like he did with whatever incident caused him to be suspended for the biggest game of his career, as perhaps the most important player to that team. That’s not an incident he uses as an example for his players who face trying times, he says, but he does use his life experience as a model for the young men following him, including linebacker Jordan Hall, who likely will be a two-year captain just like his coach this upcoming fall.

“The message to Jordan is, people are drawn to you, brother, what energy are you giving back?” Bullough said. “Because you gotta be on it all the time. There isn’t any time where you can where it’s like you can be down. You have to be on it all the time.”

Bullough said there was one incident early in spring ball that Hall was frustrated he got pulled for a teammate to play. He got frustrated, didn’t handle it well. The next time it happened, Bullough says Hall became an asset on the sidelines.

“I think that’s a testament to the kind of guy he is and the teammate he’s striving to be,” Bullough said. “… He made a mistake the one day, and he got better from it. He’s helped me a lot. And, I mean, I can admit that. I know he and Coach Rossi are very close and that he knows Coach Rossi’s defense like the back of his hand. I have no problem asking ‘Jordan, how do y’all see this? How did we do this last year?’”

“If you guys notice, any of the drills he’s like right behind us, almost mirroring everything that we do,” Hall said March 17. “Very passionate. I mean, just a great ball-knower.”

cearegood@detroitnews.com

@ConnorEaregood

Source link

Michigan

Former Eastern Michigan football player stands outside Lions facility, asks for chance on the field

Published

16 hours ago

April 14, 2026

Press Room

Former Eastern Michigan football player stands outside Lions facility, asks for chance on the field

Former Eastern Michigan football player Freddie McGee III went viral on Monday, doing anything he possibly could to get the Lions’ attention for a tryout to make the team.

“I felt I just needed to take matters into my own hands,” said McGee.

The Canton, Michigan, native, and reigning Defensive Player of the Year in the Arena Football League, says he arrived at the Lions practice facility in Allen Park at 8:45 a.m. Monday to beg for a chance to walk onto the Lions, just like how he walked onto Eastern Michigan’s football team a few years ago.

“This morning was a little nerve-racking, you know, this is definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone,” said McGee. “Just wanted to come out here, maybe catch the right scout, the right personnel person pulling in here, maybe take a look at the sign I have and get to know my story a little bit, maybe give me a shot today.”

Former Eastern Michigan University football player Freddie McGee stood outside the Lions facility in Allen in hopes of an opportunity on the field.

CBS News Detroit

McGee’s brave pitch to the Lions is that he’s not just a dreamer; he dominated the AFL last year with 14 interceptions and 25 pass breakups. And his story is one that he says exemplifies everything Dan Campbell and the Lions should be looking for: grit.

“Other than just being a local kid and growing up loving the Lions, I feel like I’m the epitome of grit, like my career hasn’t been easy, I’ve overcome a lot of adversity,” said McGee.

CBS News Detroit reached out to the Lions organization for comment and is awaiting a response.

In:

Source link

Michigan

Michigan Matters: Embracing Canada and Michigan Central Station children’s endowment update

Published

1 day ago

April 13, 2026

Press Room

Michigan Matters: Embracing Canada and Michigan Central Station children’s endowment update

It’s a look at the critical relationship between Canada and Michigan/the U.S. as former Michigan Governor and U.S. Ambassador to Canada James Blanchard and Colin Bird, Canadian Consul General, appear on Michigan Matters to talk about the state of things.

Blanchard, who has been promoting bilateral trade between the U.S. and Canada for decades, talks about how important Detroit and Michigan are to all with their focus on manufacturing, autos and agriculture.

Jim Blanchard and Colin Bird

Tim Lawlis/CBS Detroit

Bird, who oversees Michigan and three other states on behalf of the Canadian government, talked about how businesses in Canada have been impacted by tariffs for the past 18 months.

The two also discussed the importance of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which is done and awaiting the all-clear sign from Washington before it can open.

Then Andrew Stein, of the Children’s Foundation of Michigan, talked about the Michigan Central Station Children’s Endowment initiative launched by Bill Ford and his wife, Lisa, almost two years ago.

Desiree Jennings, Pam Bailey and Andrew Stein

Advertisement

Tim Lawlis/CBS Detroit

The effort raised over $20 million as Stein discussed how 11 nonprofits were chosen to be part of the program from the 100-plus that applied.

Desiree Jennings of The Children’s Center, one of the 11 organizations, explained how the nonprofit — over 90 years old — will benefit as it helps more young people.

Pam Bailey, of Birth Detroit, a six-year-old organization, another selected for the endowment, explained what the non-profit does and how it will benefit.

Stein talked about endowments and how they help support the community.

(Watch Michigan Matters at its new time: 5:30 a.m. Sundays on CBS Detroit and 9:30 a.m. Sundays on CW Detroit 50 WKBD).

(Carol Cain is the 13-time Emmy-winning senior producer and host of Michigan Matters).

In:

Source link