When Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh left the program in January to (finally) go to the NFL after years of speculation, there was really only one name that emerged in Ann Arbor to replace him. And that was eventual coach Sherrone Moore.
But that hasn’t stopped rumors and conjecture from surfacing that there could be an outside hire, especially a familiar face who once led a rival program.
In the days following Harbaugh’s departure, before Moore was officially hired and announced, the internet was abuzz with the idea that Brian Kelly, the former Notre Dame coach, may resign from his current position at LSU to accept the job in Michigan. The rumors didn’t seem to come from within the athletic program, so the speculation was that Kelly himself was lobbying to leave the SEC powerhouse to lead the maize and blue.
However, in an exclusive new interview with The Daily AdvertiserKelly insists the Michigan job wasn’t something that was on his mind.
I didn’t really think much about it. I think if my ears were interested in hearing these things, maybe it would affect me, but I have no interest in that. I have great respect for what Michigan has accomplished as a football program. They are the winningest program of all time, but I knew that when I was at Notre Dame. So, it was nothing new. This was a conscious decision to come to LSU because I wanted to be in this conference. It was much more than an individual school, as much as it was, collectively, I wanted to play in the SEC and compete in the competition that is here.
After being at Notre Dame and playing at Michigan and playing at the Midwest and playing at those schools, it was a great experience, but it would almost be reliving it again, you know what I mean? It was déjà vu for me to think otherwise. So, it wasn’t something I really thought about much.
The respect is real, but there doesn’t seem to be anything beyond the current status quo.
Kelly is obviously a good coach who has been successful at every step he has taken along the way. And he is familiar with Michigan State, having coached at Grand Valley State and also at Mount Pleasant with Central Michigan.
Ultimately, whether or not Kelly was considered, or if it was just a rumor, Michigan football made the right choice by promoting from within. Moore was a handpicked successor to Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines, throughout modern history, have had more success with candidates promoted from within. Although Gary Moeller was the head coach for only a few years after the Bo Schembechler era, he was a steadfast person in running the program. When Moeller was ousted for an off-campus incident, Lloyd Carr – who was previously Schembechler’s defensive coordinator and longtime assistant – stepped in and won the program’s first national championship since 1948.
Will Moore have similar success? While he has a solid but short track record as Harbaugh’s interim head coach, only time will tell. But history shows that the maize and blue do better with internally promoted coaches – at least since Schembechler’s arrival and departure.
