CFB Newsletter: Four Early Thoughts on Kyle Whittingham and Michigan

Plus, some thoughts on the end of the year.

Welcome to the College Football Newsletter, where we hate to see a breakup in the middle of the holidays. Yes, we’re looking at you, USC and Notre Dame.

First, a few thoughts on Michigan and Kyle Whittingham from Alex

I’ll turn this over to Hector in a moment. But first, because reports are emerging that Michigan is very likely to hire Kyle Whittingham as head coach on Friday, I’ll just share a few quick-take thoughts on the likely new Wolverines boss.

• If you are like me and have been critical of Michigan’s seemingly lousy athletic department culture, then Whittingham makes a lot of sense. We never really know without being in the building, but Whittingham’s track record suggests he’s a serious leader who maintains a high standard for how people inside his program should act. He represents a clean break from the Jim Harbaugh era. It was fun! It’s also over now.

• Whittingham is 66. Without going all the way down the rabbit hole here, I’m sure he’s one of the oldest coaches ever to take a job this good. I wouldn’t worry about age that much, though. Whittingham could still kick the ass of a significant number of his players and coaches. Most importantly, he strikes me as an adaptable guy who coaches the roster he has, not the one he thought was appropriate 20 years ago. For example, Utah’s designed QB runs more than doubled when Devon Dampier and Byrd Ficklin showed up on the 2025 roster.

• The big question will be the recruiting. Part of why I felt so confident before this season that Whittingham would be out at Utah after the year was that significant pressure had built up in the fanbase over the Utes falling behind BYU in recruiting. How much of that was on Whittingham? I don’t think anyone can say. Not close to all of it, but maybe not none of it, either. How does that translate to a school that has the Michigan money cannon at its disposal? I’d imagine Michigan decision-makers thought about that. The front-office setup is going to be important.

• Pay attention to whose name is on the press release announcing the hire, as well as who’s sitting at the podium when Whittingham is introduced. Will the not-yet-fired Warde Manuel be among those people?

We’ll record a podcast about Whittingham and Michigan in the near future. Now is a great time to become a paid subscriber. I’ll turn it over to Hector next.

© Ben Queen-Imagn Images

Let’s talk about December CFB and gratitude

Bowl season is here and no matter what your opinion is on the state of bowls in the College Football Playoff era, you’re probably watching a few of them. I personally took a chunk out of my family time to watch Ohio vs. UNLV in the Frisco Bowl. Now, we’ll be the first to tell you that bowl wins only matter when you want them to matter. But what always counts is that bowls serve as a culmination and a moment to show gratitude for what happened this year. And we’re taking that same ethos for this week’s newsletter.

Thank you for checking your inbox every Friday and spending a few minutes with us. We’re working hard to fill your podcast feeds with both free and subscriber-only episodes. It takes a lot of research to pull that off, and Richard and Alex are able to do that 52 weeks out of the year. I want to make sure they get their flowers for all the hard work they put into learning and synthesizing all the goings on in college football. A big shoutout to audio producer Anthony Vito for being ready to produce the latest episode, especially when the gang records emergency episodes late into the night.

(Editor’s note: Also shoutout to Hector, whose newsletters and social media work have been a huge part of our work here.)

Seeing the comments on this newsletter personally makes me happy every week. This newsletter is part of some different home run swings we’ve tried in 2025. The YouTube exclusives on Nebraska and the MAC are part of that, and the CFP team previews are, too. And every step of the way, you’ve shown support on social and in the comments of the videos. So thank you all very much.

Here’s what Richard and Alex dropped into your podcast feeds this week

• Do bowl games still carry the weight and importance as the bowl games of yesteryear? Is our personal nostalgia making us more fond of their previous iterations? Rodger Sherman joined Alex to talk about what’s missing from bowl games and how we can improve them.

• Holiday Q&A! Richard and Alex answered questions from paid subscribers. The questions range from the unceremonious end of the Notre Dame-USC rivalry to which side of Los Angeles Alex prefers. (For the record, he answered the Eastside, which is correct.) We also talk about some 2026 goals that we have for Split Zone Duo LLC.

Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and happy new year. The next time we’ll hit your inbox, it’ll be 2026, and we’ll know how the Rose Bowl went. Enjoy the rest of the games while we’re still in the middle of the Playoff!