As the college football season gets closer and closer with the summer months starting, it is time to start looking at where teams are, how coaches will perform, and which teams could be hoisting the trophy at the end of the season.
CBS Sports recently released its top 68 coaches in college football, ranking each Power Four conference coach as it does every May before the college football season. This ranking is one that fans live for to see if their coach has gotten better or worse since last season, and Michigan fans are happy to be seeing a new name.
With Kyle Whittingham taking over for the Wolverines, he is being evaluated more on his coaching as a whole rather than what he did at Michigan last season, since he wasn't even there. The Michigan head coach just barely snuck into the Top 10, coming in at No. 10 in these rankings.
2026 Power Four Coach Rankings 🚨
— CBS Sports College Football 🏈 (@CBSSportsCFB) May 27, 2026
Who do you think should be higher?
1-25 🔗 https://t.co/kIPhcTADyw
26-68 🔗 https://t.co/TAK4W5uOmF pic.twitter.com/svMQ9LZGFy
As it states in the rankings, Whittingham has been a frequent member high up in these rankings, especially with everything he has done at Utah before. It is clear that this is what has gotten him in the running this high, but he is about to have even more pressure on him in Ann Arbor.
Expectations at Utah are very different from those for Kyle Whittingham at Michigan
Let's not be rude here and say that Utah isn't a good football school, but compared to the history of football at Michigan, Kyle Whittingham is going to have a lot more pressure on him. After retiring from Utah, Whittingham then made the choice to take the sudden open position in Ann Arbor, and he has done pretty well so far.
Quietly, Whittingham has built a fantastic recruiting class for the future in his first offseason, and there is a lot of buzz around how he will help the offense in the fall. With a quarterback of the talent level of Bryce Underwood, Whittingham has a lot of work to do; now it is just putting the pieces together.
The pressure is going to be big in Ann Arbor, as this is a team that is accustomed to winning and hasn't been at the level it is used to over the last couple of years. At a blue-blood football school like Michigan, Whittingham has all the tools to do what he probably never could at Utah, and now he will be expected to produce.
A No. 10 ranking is a great start for Whittingham at Michigan, but fans are going to expect something higher after this season.
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