66-year old head coach emerges as top Michigan candidate after Christmas

Reports on Friday suggested that Michigan is nearing the hire of one of college football's oldest head coaches following their firing of Sherrone Moore

The Michigan marching band | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Santa Claus delivered yet another update to the Michigan head football coach search. After rumors spread that the Wolverines and Jeff Brohm were flirting around, a new development was posted Friday morning Dec. 26 suggesting that Michigan has turned their bow towards another power conference head coach from the 2025 season — who may have also coached a red team.

247 Sports' Sam Webb, a Michigan insider, said just before the Holidays that if Brohm was going to be the guy for UM, things would move fast. If not, then mum would be the word. Well, a few days passed with no white smoke coming out of the Jeff Brohm meetings, so now, it's onto new pastures. For Michigan, that apparently means taking a hard look at a long-tenured professional in the coaching space: Kyle Whittingham.

Whittingham recently stepped down after holding the job at Utah for 22 consecutive seasons but emphasized he wasn't necessarily done with coaching altogether. Well, according to ESPN's Pete Thamel, Whittingham has taken center stage in the Michigan search.

"Utah coach Kyle Whittingham has emerged as the focus of Michigan's coaching search, sources told ESPN," Thamel wrote Friday morning. "Whittingham's candidacy is expected to be shared with top Michigan officials on Friday, sources said, and a deal could come together in the near future if they approve."

Michigan Wolverines candidate Kyle Whittingham | Ben Queen-Imagn Images

There's no question that Kyle Whittingham is a hallowed name around college football — immensely respected and trusted, one of the guys who analysts and fellow coaches always speak glowingly about. Even as a coach, Whittingham didn't leave Utah because he wasn't successful any longer. Rather, the Utes finished 10-2 and have won double-digit games in four of the last seven seasons. This dude can coach a good team.

With Whittingham, the real question is his stage in life. As mentioned, he's been a major head coach for two decades and counting now, and he's 66 years old. At the start of the 2025 season, Kyle Whittingham was already the fourth-oldest head coach in FBS. Iowa's Kirk Ferentz and North Carolina's Bill Belichick are the only coaches with more than a year on him.

With Whittingham's age and long career, plus the trend of college football coaches only growing younger, you'd think this isn't a very long-term play by Michigan. But in a year where they were surprisingly thrust into a coaching search long after most of the top candidates were gone, perhaps the Wolverines can play it safe and nab a very high-floor coach that will produce a few good years even if he isn't around for the long haul.

Kyle Whittinham put together a 177-88 record through more than 20 seasons at Utah. He won his first six bowl games with the program and 11 total but hadn't notched a postseason victory since 2017 by the time he stepped down this fall.