The 2026 season will be the second time in three years that both Michigan State and Michigan will have first-year head coaches.
Both MSU and UM essentially hired the most experienced candidate possible. The Spartans went and got Pat Fitzgerald, the former head coach at Northwestern for 17 years. The Wolverines chose Kyle Whittingham, who had been the head coach at Utah for 21 seasons, with 15 of those seasons at the Power Five/Four level.
The tenures of these two coaches at their respective previous schools overlapped nearly entirely. Whittingham became the full-time head coach of the Utes in 2005; Fitzgerald took over his Wildcats the following year.
During that long overlap, these two coaches, who helped transform and raise the standards of their schools, met once: the 2018 Holiday Bowl. Here’s how the game went:
Game Recap
Northwestern entered the game 8-5 and 22nd in the CFP rankings, having won the Big Ten West. The Wildcats gave No. 6 Ohio State a good fight in that conference title game, too, being within three points during the third quarter and within seven during the fourth quarter…