Michigan Football: Should Wolverines Look to the NFL for Their Next Coach?

Nebraska and Florida have filled coaching vacancies even as Wisconsin gears up for its own search. A high-stakes game of musical chairs is underway as coaches move, creating a domino effect in their wake.

But the challenge facing Michigan’s next coach is extraordinary, and few collegiate coaches are prepared for what they'd find in Ann Arbor.

Michigan needs to look to the pro ranks for its next head coach.

Name	Team
Jim Harbaugh	San Francisco
John Harbaugh	Baltimore
Jim Mora Jr.	Atlanta
Sean Payton	New Orleans
Greg Schiano	Tampa Bay
Mike Trgovac	Green Bay

A coach with pro experience would be undaunted by the prospects of battling Ohio State and resurgent in-state rival Michigan State. An NFL coach would be experienced with the media scrutiny that comes with a job like Michigan and have instant credibility with recruits and alumni.

There are probably dozens of coaches who could manage the football part of coaching the Wolverines, but the failure of former coaches Brady Hoke and Rich Rodriguez have put the Michigan football program in peril.

New university president Mark Schlissel has been critical of "sports stuff" and complained the search for new athletic director was a "time sink," per The Michigan Daily.

He eventually chose Jim Hackett as interim athletic director. Hackett is a former business leader known for reorganizing his former company while downsizing more than 12,000 workers.

Hackett seems to be the remedy for an athletic department that grew substantially under former athletic director David Brandon.

The Michigan athletic department runs on the revenue generated by the football program, and the golden goose is barely keeping up.

The Wolverines need more than just a solid football coach, they need a rock star capable of dealing with the media and alumni while wowing recruits and assembling a top-notch staff of assistants.

The failure of Rich Rodriguez—who has found success at Arizona—proves that Michigan’s problems require more than just a qualified coach.

Michigan football is on the brink of irrelevancy.

The landscape of college football has changed—TV revenue has leveled the playing field. The traditional football powers are under assault, trapped between a growing demographic shift favoring southern schools and a revenue model that has increased viable competitors.

The Wolverines can’t risk another three- or four-year experiment that ends in failure. The program hasn't won a conference title since 2004; it lost to Big Ten newcomers Rutgers and Maryland this season.

Pro coaches typically cite compensation as the top reason to favor NFL over college football. Michigan needs to dig deep and pay a competitive salary to lure a top NFL coach to Ann Arbor.

Tony Ding/Associated Press

"The head coach of Michigan football is one of the finest jobs in American sports today, and we will have great options [for a coach]," Hackett said when he fired Hoke. "The University of Michigan remains one of the top programs in the country."

The harsh reality is that Michigan has been coasting on fumes for the last seven years. Rodriguez and Hoke couldn't right the ship.

The next coach will face the same "win-now" mentality at Michigan that pro coaches face every day, so the Wolverines need to find the right NFL coach and convince him to come to Ann Arbor.

If not, all talk of Michigan's greatness will remain in past tense.

Phil Callihan is a featured writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations obtained firsthand

Follow @PCallihan