Next Michigan coach shouldn’t have any ties to Jim Harbaugh. It’s time to clean house
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If there’s a silver lining to the firing of Sherrone Moore as Michigan football coach, it’s that the university has a chance to do something that has been overdue.
It’s time to clean house.
Specifically: It’s time to get rid of anyone in the football program with attachments to the Jim Harbaugh era.
I wouldn’t call this a blessing in disguise, but rather a golden opportunity for a troubled program. It’s a chance for the Wolverines to divest themselves of a problematic past that continues to affect the present and has the potential to haunt the future.
What this means is that the next Michigan coach shouldn’t have any ties to Harbaugh — during his time in Ann Arbor or at any other time during his coaching career in college or the NFL.
I’ll even take it a step further. The next coach also shouldn’t have ties to his brother, John, or his father, Jack.
Ann Arbor needs to become a Harbaugh-free zone.
Yes, Jim Harbaugh brought the school its first national title in a quarter-century. He deserves credit and praise for returning one of the sport’s blue-bloods to its place among that elite lineage.
But all that winning came at the high cost of tarnishing Michigan’s name, reputation and moral standing.
The NCAA suspended Harbaugh twice: for 2020 recruiting violations and for the 2023 sign-stealing scandal. The latter earned Harbaugh a four-year ban and a 10-year show-cause order that effectively banned him from returning to college football.
U-M also was put on four years’ probation and was levied penalties that are expected to cost the school more than $30 million.
Of course, Moore, by then ascended to U-M’s top spot, was also given a one-game suspension by the NCAA (after serving two in 2025 as a program-induced ban) and a two-year show-cause order as part of the sign-stealing punishment. Likewise, half a dozen members of Harbaugh’s staff wound up with at least a one-year show-cause order.
And those are just the folks who broke NCAA rules.
We can’t forget Matt Weiss, indicted in March on federal charges for accusations of hacking into computers at more than 100 universities and stealing the identities of more than 3,300 student athletes, most of them women, beginning in 2015 while Weiss was on the Baltimore Ravens coaching staff under John Harbaugh, and continuing while he was Jim Harbaugh’s quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator.
To say Harbaugh had little control of the people who worked under him at Michigan is a severe understatement.
Here’s who Michigan shouldn’t hire as coach
It’s easy to remember the winning and the championships under Harbaugh. But the toll of all the damage the school endured under his tenure is much harder to see and feel, because it isn’t a popular public topic. The M Den doesn’t sell T-shirts or posters honoring all that dishonor.
But you can bet that toll continues to be felt deeply within the upper reaches of U-M’s athletic department and school administration. If those with the power to influence the hiring of the next football coach want to avoid similar tolls, they can first start by eliminating those with ties to Harbaugh.
That means no Jedd Fisch. Washington’s coach was Harbaugh’s quarterbacks coach in 2015-16. That also means no Jesse Minter, Harbaugh’s defensive coordinator with the Chargers and his DC at U-M in 2022-23 (and one of the coaches with a show-cause order).
Here’s who Michigan should hire as coach
OK, so who should be the next coach?
The short answer: Just about anyone else who isn’t tied to the Harbaugh family.
The longer short answer: Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer or Indiana’s Curt Cignetti. DeBoer would be a home run. Cignetti would be a walk-off grand slam.
DeBoer, who lost to Harbaugh in the College Football Playoff title game in January 2024, has fielded multiple questions about potential interest in the U-M job. On Monday, he was asked, whether he’d be Alabama’s coach in 2026. DeBoer’s answer was even shorter: “Yes.”
There have been no reports of Cignetti addressing whether he has been contacted by Michigan or whether he has any interest in the job. Trust me, I Googled him.
The two big obstacles — if not outright concerns — for DeBoer and Cignetti are their hefty buyouts and their availability, delayed until after their teams are done with the College Football Playoff.
But the buyouts shouldn’t matter. DeBoer’s would be $3 million or $4 million and Cignetti’s would be $15 million. You can almost hear Jolin Zhu (Larry Ellison’s wife, for those who sat out the Bryce Underwood bidding war) clicking her pen and shouting out, “Hey, Larry? Do you remember where you put the checkbook?”
And for Wolverines fans wringing their hands over recruiting losses and potential transfer-portal departures while U-M waits for its newest man, you have to consider the big picture and what such a big-name hire would mean.
Maybe athletic director Warde Manuel learned his lesson about the mythical benefits of hiring a “Michigan Man.” After all, he was smart to move on from Juwan Howard and hire Dusty May, who has the Wolverines atop the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll in the college basketball world.
Now Manuel has the chance to make the right choice again by chopping down Harbaugh’s coaching tree in Ann Arbor, pulling out the roots, salting the soil and declaring that ground now and forever fallow.
Contact Carlos Monarrez at cmonarrez@freepress.com and follow him on X @cmonarrez.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Michigan football new coach shouldn’t have any ties to Jim Harbaugh
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