When Tony Alford was hired at Michigan to be the running backs coach, it felt like a fox was entering the hen house. Alford had coached at Ohio State for nine years, was an Ohio native, and was deeply rooted in the Ohio State program, but when push came to shove and he made the move to the Wolverines, his coaching excellence superseded all of that.
Even Alford was one of the first to admit it wasn’t easy going from one side of the most intense rivalry in college football to the other. He said for a solid year he struggled to even utter “Go Blue,” also joking his kids only knew Michigan as “The Team Up North.” However, when it came to doing his job, Alford didn’t shy away from shaping young men as football players and as people, no matter the color of their uniform.
The saddest part of Alford’s move, as he shared on the Hail Media podcast, was the fact that some people in his life couldn’t get over the fact that he simply took a job somewhere else and were “conditional” friends, turning their backs on him and his family…