Michigan Wolverines football head coach Kyle Whittingham was hired Dec. 26, and immediately rumors started swirling that 50-year-old Jay Hill was the top candidate to be his defensive coordinator.

BYU fought to keep Hill, who spent the last three seasons as the Cougars’ defensive coordinator, helping them finish No. 19 nationally in scoring defense in 2025. However, the attraction of coaching for Whittingham at Michigan was too much. Hill quickly joined the staff and signed a three-year deal that will pay him $2.5 million in base salary in 2026.

“The decision to come to Michigan was not hard at all,” Hill said on the ‘In The Trenches’ podcast. “Coach Whitt called me and said, ‘Hey, I think I have this opportunity. What do you think?’ I said, ‘Coach, I’m in, because it’s Michigan.’ I believe we can win national championships here. I believe we can win consistent Big Ten championships here. With the way Coach Whitt coaches, his discipline and toughness, I just think it’s a perfect match for Michigan. I was in.

“Moving your family and doing some of those things, that’s the hard side of this job, but a lot of times you put yourself in a great situation and you figure out the other stuff after.”

Hill and Whittingham go way back, of course. Whittingham was the defensive coordinator at Utah when Hill was a cornerback on the team. Then, Hill coached as an assistant under Whittingham, who took over as head coach in 2005, from 2005-13. The Lehi, Utah, native left to become the head coach at Weber State (Ogden, Utah) from 2014-22.

“I’m one of the few guys in the coaching profession that has the perspective of I actually got to play for Coach Whitt,” the Michigan coordinator explained. “He was the defensive coordinator when I was playing. And then I got to be a graduate assistant under him, and then I got to see him as a head coach as he grew into the role.

“I have more respect for Coach Whitt than any coach in the game, just because he’s phenomenal with X’s and O’s, he’s extremely disciplined and extremely intelligent. Like, when you sit down with him, you’re like, ‘Man, this guy’s brilliant.’ That’s what I always saw in him, and why I stayed with him for so long and why I was willing to come back with him, because I just see special in Coach Whitt. He’s a coach of all coaches.”

The two have a special bond that should benefit Michigan in the years ahead.

“It is different when you go from player to now he’s your boss,” Hill said. “I think the discipline and the structure and all that just, as a coach for him, you’ve got to be even more on it. And then I have the unique perspective to be away from him for nine years as a head coach and then three more at BYU. So I was not with Coach Whitt for 12 years, and that’s where actually we had more of a fun, this is a buddy type relationship, where we’d go golfing or go skiing or something like that. Because you rarely do that when you’re working together as much. So, I’ve gotten to see him in a lot of different lights that is pretty special.”

Hill has also seen Michigan’s head coach grow over the years, from a defensive coordinator to young head coach to one of the models of consistency in the sport.

“X’s and O’s wise, I think he’s as good as any coach that there is,” Hill noted. “And he’s one of those guys that never stops learning. He wants to know what the offense is doing, he’s extremely smart with special teams. He wants to know all the techniques from all the position groups. So, I’ve seen him grow in that aspect.

“I would say just understanding that it’s never perfect. Although we’re striving for perfection, it never is, and so how do you overcome those things? I think he’s really grown there.”

Jay Hill wants to be a head coach again someday

It’s a challenge to go from running a program to working for someone else’s, which is what Hill did in leaving Weber State, where he posted a 68-39 record at the FCS level, to coordinate the BYU defense under head coach Kalani Sitake.

“That’s very tough,” Hill explained. “Especially, I was a head coach for nine years, and you get into your own systems of, this is how I want it to look, this is how I want to have it happen. And, if it’s not going that way, you just tweak and change it how you want. But when you’re not the head coach, it’s not always that easy to make those tweaks and changes.

“But it was good for me to be a head coach and then go back to being an assistant, and just kind of looking from different lenses on what those things look like.”

Hill has aspirations of being a head coach again, but those goals are on the back burner as he works to accomplish special things at Michigan.

“Well, I don’t know. I would love to be a head coach again, but I think right now in coaching, you better be where your feet are and you better be planted,” the Michigan coach said. “So, right now it’s all coordinating at Michigan and just making this a championship contender every year and doing the best job I can for Coach Whittingham, because obviously that’s my role right now. But, yeah, I miss some things about being a head coach. Would love to have that opportunity again someday.”