New Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham has a large body of work that indicates he’s a winner. During Whittingham’s 21 seasons as Utah’s head coach, he amassed a 177-78 record with wins in the Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, as well as appearing in the Rose Bowl twice. Whittingham was known to do more with less at Utah — but now he’s at Michigan, one of the college football juggernauts in terms of resources.
Fox analyst Joel Klatt put out a list of his top 10 coaches in college football, and Whittingham made the list at No. 7.
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Klatt’s Top 10
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Marcus Freeman: Notre Dame
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Kyle Whittingham: Michigan
Klatt on Whittingham
-“Kyle is a hell of a football coach, and you have to understand where he brought Utah from all the way. Now that was a very good program. And obviously, he got the job after Urban Meyer had kind of elevated them to the point where they were on the national stage, but he’s the one Kyle that took them from the Group of Five into the Pac-12, and then made the transition into the Big XII. Like he did a lot of things at Utah and made them a perennial top 15, 10 team in the country. And he did. So I would argue without the best talent in the country.”
– “His teams play exceptionally hard. They’re physical, they’re sound, and they’re well coached. OK. So Kyle Whittingham is going to be there. It’s still kind of weird for me to think like Kyle Whittingham at Michigan. He’s so Utah to me, but now obviously he’s a Michigan man, and I can’t wait to see what he does in Ann Arbor for Michigan.”
Analysis
It’s hard to argue with much of Klatt’s list. His top three coaches have all won national championships, while four of the top five have appeared in a national championship. It can be debated whether Steve Sarkisian and Dan Lanning are actually better coaches than Whittingham. Lanning’s Oregon teams have gotten absolutely demolished in the College Football Playoff in consecutive years, and Sarkisian will be on the hot seat in 2026 if another down season occurs with quarterback Arch Manning.
We’re about to see what Whittingham can do with the elite resources that Michigan has. 64-year-old Curt Cignetti certainly wasn’t on any top 10 lists two years ago, but then he transformed Indiana and had an epic 2025 season. Can Whittingham, 66, turn Michigan into a championship contender quickly, just as Cignetti was able to do in Bloomington? If so, Klatt’s list could look much different in a year or two. Whittingham’s teams play hard, physical, and fundamentally sound — which is going to give the Wolverines a fighting chance for massive improvement in 2026 and beyond.
