Biff Poggi to return to Michigan football as associate head coach

Posted by author February 4, 2025 Football

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One of the biggest factors for Michigan football’s turnaround — despite what rival fans like to say — was the change in culture going into the 2021 season.

Part of it was the players — Aidan Hutchinson, Josh Ross, Cade McNamara, Mike Sainristil, and others vowed to no longer let the Wolverines have a season like the 2-4 2020 COVID campaign. But another part of the culture came from the top, when then-head coach Jim Harbaugh brought back Biff Poggi, father of former Michigan fullback Henry Poggi, to be an assistant head coach.

By all accounts, the longtime Baltimore (Md.) St. Frances Academy head coach was something of a consigliere to Harbaugh, and it paid huge dividends. No longer was Harbaugh micromanaging the entire team, but he was sitting back and letting the coaches do their jobs, and it also became a player-led culture.

On Nov. 23, 2024, the Michigan fan base was ecstatic with all of the possibilities when Sherrone Moore hosted Poggi for the Northwestern game, just weeks after Poggi lost his job as the nearly two-year head coach of Charlotte. Many surmised that Poggi could return to Ann Arbor, and it appears that’s the case.

Per The Michigan Insider’s Alejandro Zuniga, Poggi is officially returning to the program and will have the title ‘associate head coach.’

Now Moore, entering his second year, will have a longtime head coach at multiple levels he can lean on. Though the Wolverines improved throughout the year — giving Oregon a run for its money, and the same with Indiana, before beating eventual national champion Ohio State and then Alabama in the ReliaQuest Bowl — Moore having a right-hand man should help not only with in-game situations but also with keeping the locker room on the right trajectory.