Mike Haywood Named Miami(Ohio)'s First African-American Head Football Coach

Miami of Ohio—“The Cradle of Football Coaches”—will name Mike Haywood, Notre Dame’s former offensive coordinator, as Miami’s next head football coach, according to sources close to Haywood. 

Mike Haywood, a Notre Dame graduate, will bring the number of African-American head football coaches to six in the 119 FBS programs.  Haywood has been the Fighting Irish’s offensive coordinator for four years under Charlie Weis.  His contributions to the Irish offensive explosion in 2005 earned him recognition by the American Football Coaches Association as the Assistant Coach of the Year.

Haywood is also Notre Dame’s running backs coach. He previously served as running backs coach for two years at Texas, where he coached Cedric Benson, the 2004 Doak Walker Award winner.  In his two years at Texas, the Longhorns were ranked second (2004) and fifth (2003) nationally in rushing.

Haywood was also the Longhorns' recruiting coordinator until Weis lured him back to Notre Dame.  A native of Texas, Haywood recruited the Lone Star state and Louisiana for the Irish.  Haywood was a four-year letterman at Notre Dame. 

Haywood was a running back coach at LSU from 1995-2002, where he developed some of the Tigers’ finest running backs, including Kevin Faulk, LaBrandon Toefield, Domanick Davis (NFL Rookie of the Year, 2003), Cecil Collins, and Rondell Mealey.  Haywood has been chosen as one of LSU’s All-Time Assistant Coaches.

He has also been an assistant coach at Ball State, Ohio University, Army, and Minnesota.

Haywood will join Turner Gill (Buffalo), Randy Shannon (Miami, Fl.), Kevin Sumlin (Houston), Mike Locksley (New Mexico), and Ron English (Eastern Michigan) as the sole African-American head coaches.  Haywood was a finalist last year for the head coaching position at Houston. 

With Haywood fillling Miami's position, Army and New Mexico State are the remaining FBS head coach openings.  Army is rumored to be on the verge of naming Rich Ellerson, Cal-Poly, head coach from eleven candidates.  Ivin Jasper, Navy, recently withdrew his name from consideration.  New Mexico State announced narrowing their field to three.  Only DeWayne Walker's name has emerged as one of the three.  Six of the ten candidates under consideration are African-American.  

Miami (O) got its nickname "The Cradle of Coaches" by producing such coaches as Earl (Red) Blaik, Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Weeb Ewbank, Sid Gillman, Ara Parseghian, Bo Schembechler, Jim Tressel, Bill Arnsparger, George Little, Bill Mallory, John Pont, Ron Zook, Gary Moeller, Dick Tomey, Sean Payton, Dick Crum, Paul Dietzel, Randy Walker, John Harbaugh, Larry Smith, and Terry Hoeppner.

Under previous coach Shane Montgomery, the RedHawks were 17-30 over the last four years, including a 2-10 record in 2008.