Detroit — In any college football coaching transition, among the top priorities is establishing a home base in terms of recruiting. For new Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham, who spent the last 21 years as Utah head coach, and his staff, that means making inroads with in-state recruiting, particularly in Detroit.
Most of his assistants, however, coached with him at Utah and never have focused on recruiting Michigan. To help establish local ties, Ron Bellamy, who played at Michigan and most recently was the Wolverines’ receivers coach after a long career as West Bloomfield High head coach where he won a state championship, was brought back recently as director of player personnel.
Running backs coach Tony Alford has recruited in the Midwest, as has special teams coordinator Kerry Coombs, who has deep Ohio roots as a high school coach for 24 years before making the move to college coaching.
New offensive line coach Jim Harding also has local roots but has coached out west since 2009, first at Wyoming and then at Utah when he joined Whittingham’s staff in 2014. Harding is from Maumee, Ohio, was a standout offensive lineman at Toledo, and coached at Troy Athens from 2005-2008, spending his last season as head coach.
To get acquainted with coaches from Detroit Public Schools, Michigan’s two coordinators and the assistants attended a recent event at the Horatio Williams Foundation in Detroit where they met local coaches and then broke down into position groups. Michigan general manager Dave Peloquin also attended, but Whittingham did not make the meet-and-greet because he was delayed completing exit interviews with current players.
“If it was in a perfect world, you'd like to build the offensive line room from inside out, meaning trying to get the top offensive linemen from the state,” Harding told The Detroit News at the event. “I think that promotes pride and interest from fans around the state. Having seen the kids play in high school and having coached in the state of Michigan, I know there's really good high school football here, and so we’re doing things like this to try to network and get the high school coaches comfortable with a brand-new staff. Although I'm from here, most of the staff is not, so I think it's really important to get out and try to get in front of as many people as possible.”
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Coaches often speak of putting a fence around whatever state they’re in. And while that’s a cliché, it’s clear the objective is to recruit and keep the state’s top talent. Michigan currently has six commitments to the 2027 class, including two from Michigan: Muskegon offensive lineman Recarder Kitchen and Saline interior offensive lineman Louis Esposito.
“I'm from Texas, and people talk about the brand of high school football that comes out of there,” quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer said. “I think people forget what a hotbed Detroit high school football is. For us just being right down the road, yeah, it is a priority, and it's something that we need. We have to get the kids here in the city of Detroit, and there's a lot of great kids, a lot of great football players here, and so we got to make sure that they're Michigan football players.”
Bellamy, in his new role, is the connection between the Michigan coaching staff and Metro Detroit recruiting. He spent 11 seasons as West Bloomfield head coach and knows the area and the coaches.
“I’m making sure that we understand the importance of the state of Michigan and that we build those relationships,” Bellamy said. “I just want to make sure the guys know how important recruiting Michigan is.”
The message clearly has been received. Lewis Powell, Michigan’s defensive ends coach/run-game coordinator, has spent his entire coaching career out west, starting in 2009 as a graduate assistant at Utah. He spent three seasons at Hawaii and the last 11 at Utah. He said it’s every program’s priority to keep in-state talent at home.
“There's a bunch of talent here, and No. 1 thing was to get out here to Detroit and help out with these coaches and just talk ball and kind of introduce ourselves so they're comfortable with us,” Powell said. “A lot of us are from the West Coast, University of Utah. I've worked with Coach Whittingham for 15 years, and obviously I trusted him enough to come with him and get out of our comfort zone.
“It's all about relationships, and as soon as they feel comfortable with us, they'll be comfortable sending us their kids, because all these high school coaches treat their kids as if their own sons, and they wouldn't want to just send them out to strangers. This is a huge thing for us to be able to come out here and create relationships and just introduce ourselves and gain their trust and the comfort level to where, hey, this is a kid that we think they can play at your level, and we’d love for him to stay close to home, and we know now, after you guys coming here and talking with us, that you guys will take care of them.”
After his playing career at BYU concluded following the 2019 season, Micah Simon started his coaching career as an analyst at Syracuse in 2022. He has coached at Northern Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, and the thread that connects every stop is the importance of local recruiting.
“Everywhere I've been, I've always loved connecting with the coaches that are in that area or in that state,” Simon said. “It doesn’t matter where you are, you need to build that fence around where your school is. For Michigan, there's no better place than Detroit to do that. There's so many kids here that we're recruiting right now and we don't want to leave the state.”
Coombs spoke briefly to the entire group of Detroit coaches and then introduced the Michigan staff. He told the coaches if they need assistance with schemes, they’ll help, and if they need help with drills, they will offer their knowledge.
“Just send your guys down the road and help us win a national championship,” Coombs told them.
When Coombs was coaching high school in Cincinnati, he said Greg Carter brought his Detroit De Porres team there for a game.
“We won, and after the game, I learned a great lesson from Greg Carter,” Coombs said. “His players had brooms and dust pans and cleaned the visitor's locker. They were classy people. So I knew of the football in Michigan as a high school coach, and then when I eventually evolved to working for Urban (Meyer at Ohio State), it was a no-brainer for me that we had to come up here and get players. We had none. If you're there (in Ohio), it's hard to pull players from here, as it should be. Now, we want to make it really hard.”