From players to coaches to recruiters to morals, Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham is ensuring that the Wolverines only have the best of the best on his staff.
Most recently, the Michigan Wolverines announced that Whittingham had hired Larry Black as his defensive tackles coach, stealing him from the Vanderbilt Commodores, who have been one of the biggest growers in college football.
Before his time with the 'Dores, Black had quickly made his way up the coaching ladder at various programs. In 2015, he took his first college coaching job as the defensive line coach at Carthage College.
One year later, he started a three-year stint as one of the Toledo Rockets' graduate assistants before spending a year in the same role with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
From 2019 until 2021, he returned to Toledo as the team's defensive line coach before accepting the job at Vanderbilt in 2022.
Black spent three years as the Commodores' defensive line coach and was named as Vanderbilt's co-defensive coordinator ahead of the 2025 season. Now, he's coming to Ann Arbor, alongside a slew of other elite assistants and coordinators.
Kyle Whittingham's coaching staff in Ann Arbor looks a lot like Utah's
BREAKING: Michigan is hiring Vanderbilt DL coach / co-defensive coordinator Larry Black as DT coach per @PeteThamel
— uofmcoverage (@uofmcoverage) February 14, 2026
Larry was Vanderbilt’s DL coach the last three seasons #GoBlue pic.twitter.com/RjFGEbVElu
A number of Whittingham's coordinators and assistant coaches followed him from Utah to Michigan, looking to return the Wolverines to their status as a premier program.
Also read: New Michigan DC didn't hold back on why he left Utah for Ann Arbor
Former Utah offensive coordinator Jason Beck, tight ends coach Freddie Whittingham, quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer Jr., and wide receivers coach Micah Simon all followed Whittingham to Ann Arbor to coach the Wolverines.