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Michigan coaching search: Latest on the Wolverines' possible targets
Michigan fired head coach Brady Hoke last week, and the search continues for his replacement. Interestingly, the school has hired search firm Korn Ferry to aid in the process, and will pay KF a minimum of $80,000 and a max of $250,000 for its work. Can you say background checks?
Before KF does its work, we check in on the candidates who have been mentioned.
Jim Harbaugh: Harbaugh's tenure with the San Francisco 49ers may be coming to an end, and that has ramped up speculation that this former Wolverines quarterback could make a return to his alma mater. However, former Michigan Heisman Trophy winner Desmond Howard summed it up best during a radio interview with the NFL Network's Rich Eisen:
"I just see Harbaugh right now as being like probably the cutest girl in school that everyone wants to take to the prom," Howard said, per comments transcribed by the Detroit News. "It's like everyone wants to court him, college and NFL alike. He's like the most beautiful girl in high school everyone wants to take to prom, so now she has all these choices. It's almost like if she goes to the prom with you, then she's doing you a favor. It kind of has that sense to it. Now I could be dead wrong, I hope I am, but when I speak to different people and you hear stories about Jim and how the Jets will probably come after him, Oakland will probably come after him ..."
What it comes down to, Howard said, is what Harbaugh wants his coaching legacy to be.
"I guess my thing is, if I was in coaching, nothing would satisfy me more than to say, 'To hell with all of this, I'm going up to Ann Arbor, and I'm getting that ship right,'" Howard said, per the Eisen interview. "'That's going to be my coaching legacy. I'm want to go back to Ann Arbor, and I want to get this thing right. I want to get this program back to where it belongs, that's my only goal in coaching right now.' But see, Jim, because he's been so successful, he could say, 'Well, I want to go back to the Super Bowl and see if I can win one.'"
Les Miles: The former Michigan assistant has heard the Wolverines call before (and reportedly already has heard from the school this time around, too), and has a track record of success at LSU that Michigan fans would die for right now. He played and coached under Bo Schembechler, and played alongside Jim Hackett, the current interim AD at Michigan. However, if Miles has turned down this opportunity twice, would he want to leave Baton Rouge now? Or is he interested in leaving after an 8-4 campaign, his worst effort since 2008? The Baton Rouge Advocate's Scott Rabalais says there might be something to the speculation.
David Cutcliffe: NFL insider Gil Brandt reported that Michigan had offered Duke coach David Cutcliffe its head coaching job, but Duke refuted the report, saying that Cutcliffe had no contact with Michigan. No matter who you believe there, it doesn't appear Cutcliffe is going anywhere.
Greg Schiano: A noted disciplinarian, Schiano turned around Rutgers but couldn't do the same with the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Surely he'd have interest because he currently is out of coaching. However, Sports Illustrated's Peter King notes that Schiano turned down Michigan before.
The Detroit Free Press also mentioned these names, a current who's who of primarily the college coaching landscape:
Gary Patterson: He's been in Fort Worth since 1998 and brought TCU to national prominence. That sounds a lot like Bob Stoops, given Stoops has been at Oklahoma since 2000. The difference there is that the Sooners had a renowned program before Stoops took over.
Also: Stanford's David Shaw, Texas A&M's Kevin Sumlin, Arizona State's Todd Graham, Tennessee's Butch Jones, Northwestern's Pat Fitzgerald and Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, an Ann Arbor native and Jim Harbaugh's brother.
No matter who the Wolverines choose, there's a commitment to paying the assistant coaches. Michigan currently ranks 9th in the country for pay among assistant coaches, and it's behind only Ohio State in the Big Ten, according to the USA Today coaching salary database.
That certainly will help any coach who takes the job.
