• 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.”

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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.

The University of Michigan has beefed up its football personnel department with multiple new hires, people with direct knowledge told USA TODAY Sports on Monday, March 23.

The Wolverines are adding former New York Giants director of scouting Chris Pettit and ex-Wolverines player and assistant coach Ron Bellamy to the staff of new general manager Dave Peloquin, who was hired last month by Kyle Whittingham and worked closely with Whittingham in these moves, according to people familiar with the process.

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Pettit will serve as Michigan’s assistant general manager of player personnel; Bellamy has been tabbed as the program’s senior director of recruiting relations.

Sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the new hires have not yet been publicly announced by Michigan.

Working with the NFL’s Giants for almost two decades, from 2004-2022, Pettit was a part of the organization as it won a pair of Super Bowl championships and eventually rose from intern to the role of director of college scouting.

The Giants dismissed Pettit in May 2022 after they hired Joe Schoen as general manager.

Pettit had founded a scouting data service, Scout Smarter AI, that leaned into technology and data to supply what the company previously termed “a stat-based scouting” service for football.

Bellamy, who played at Michigan from 1999-2002, had been on the Wolverine coaching staffs of both Jim Harbaugh and Sherrone Moore from 2021-25. He first served as Michigan’s safeties coach before he transitioned to coach wideouts, the position he played, the past four seasons.

Initially, Bellamy was not retained by Whittingham after Whittingham was hired away from Utah in late December.

But sources familiar with the process told USA TODAY Sports that Peloquin and Whittingham worked together to find a way to bring Bellamy back into the program.

In the overhauled personnel department, Bellamy and Pettit will join Skylar Phan, whom Michigan hired away from USC last month to become the Wolverines’ director of recruiting.

Michigan has completed its first week of spring practice under Whittingham and is scheduled to host its annual spring game on Saturday, April 18.

BUFFALO, NY — Nimari Burnett couldn’t help but shake his head as he thought about it.

As he sat in front of his locker at KeyBank Center, after Michigan rolled over Saint Louis to return to the Sweet 16. before the buses returned, he realized he’d be playing a former team one way or the other. His two former programs, Alabama and Texas Tech were set to meet in the NCAA Tournament second round. The winner would head to the Sweet 16 to face Michigan basketball at Chicago’s United Center, with a spot in the Elite Eight on the line.

The team on which he made his college mark, playing against a squad where it didn’t work out, in his hometown, the place where he became a freshman All-American, before he transferred to Prolific Prep and took the next step of his journey.

“It’s an exciting feeling,” Burnett said. “I was talking to my family about it the other day. “Just can’t wait to see who we’ll play.”

On Sunday night, the Crimson Tide and Red Raiders squared off in Tampa, Florida, with XXX prevailing, xxx.

And now, Burnett’s basketball journey will get a full-circle moment, on Friday

But it will be just one of several big moments for him.

‘I’d be making a dumb decision’

A year ago Nimari Burnett, his now-fiancé, Will Tschetter and his girlfriend all went out to lunch at Cafe Zola in downtown Ann Arbor.

had been eliminated in the Sweet 16 about a week earlier, and the two longest-tenured Wolverines wanted a well-earned time away from the game to enjoy some food, friends and laughs.

Burnett had just finished his fifth year of college basketball and all season long, he’d been telling his teammates it was likely his last.

In fact, Burnett didn’t go through U-M’s senior day activities in March 2025, because he’d done so the year before, under the previous staff, and didn’t want to make the moment about himself, given he’d already had one.

But on that late March afternoon, Tschetter couldn’t help himself — he had to know.

“I remember straight up asking him, ‘What are your thoughts on next year?’” Tschetter said Saturday in Michigan’s locker room at KeyBank Center. “That was when, I think, he’d made his decision, he was like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m going to pull the trigger and come back.’

“All year he’d been saying, like, ‘Nah, this is my last year.’ We were all getting the ‘Unc’ jokes in, because he was a fifth-year. But yeah, I mean we were all super, super happy when he made the decision. It’s been a great ride with him.’

Burnett made his return to the Wolverines official less than a month after that lunch, on April 21, 2025. He was optimistic, based on the roster coming together — transfers Elliot Cadeau, Morez Johnson Jr. and Aday Mara were already in the fold, with the possibility of landing Yaxel Lendeborg — that the 2025-26 season could be a special one. 

The staff’s message and vision only convinced him further.

“I felt like last year was the best year of college, until this year,” Burnett said, his eyes almost reflective, as if he was processing it all in real time. “My collegiate career has been long, been through a lot of ups and downs and so I was uncertain of the future.

“But just trusting the staff, understanding they had high hopes of winning and they know how to recruit. I was like yeah, I’d be making a dumb decision [to leave].”

Of course, Burnett didn’t know all that would follow. But after everything he’d gone through to that point, he was more than willing to take the chance.

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The winding journey

A McDonald’s All-American coming out of high school, Burnett began his collegiate career at Texas Tech. After one injury-shortened year in Lubbock, Burnett didn’t like the fit, so he opted to transfer to Alabama.

The move to the SEC brought a world of changes. In the months leading up to the season, Burnett tore his ACL, which sidelined him for the entirety of the 2021-22 season. His next season wasn’t much better, playing fewer than 15 minutes a game, with a mere nine starts.