Jay Hill isn’t slamming the door on a future head coaching job.
Michigan’s defensive coordinator said Wednesday that he “absolutely” still has head coaching aspirations, according to a video shared on X by The Michigan Insider’s Brice Marich. Hill, who spent nine seasons as Weber State’s head coach before taking over as BYU’s defensive coordinator and associate head coach in December 2022, said the experience meant a lot to him.
“I loved my time as a head coach,” he said. “That was something special to me, that relationship with my players and all that stuff.”
For now, though, Hill made it clear that his attention is nowhere else.
“It can’t be the attention. I owe it to my players to be all locked into where my feet are right now, and my feet are at Michigan and doing everything I can to have the best defense in the country.”
That defense has done plenty to back up the talk. Even with Michigan sitting at 4-3, the Wolverines are second in the country in yards allowed per game at 250.1, trailing only Notre Dame’s 235, and they rank 15th nationally in points allowed per game at 15.7.
After Michigan’s 13-6 loss to Indiana, head coach Kyle Whittingham said he was “extremely proud” of the defense.
“That’s an elite defense that we have,” he said postgame. “I’m telling you right now, to hold those two receivers like we did, they were under 100 yards throwing.”
The praise didn’t stop there. Wolverines defensive lineman Bobby Kanka called Hill a “football genius” in his media availability Tuesday, per On3.
“He’ll call certain plays and you think, ‘Wow, that was a perfect play,’” he said. “It goes back to that trust you were talking about.
It’s trusting him and knowing he’s going to put us in the right call. He’s a football guy for sure.”
In Other News...
BYUs UCF Win Looks Different After The Knights Ugly Reality Check
BYUs win over UCF has a different feel now that the Knights were handed a 41-9 loss by Baylor in their next outing. What looked like a solid conference result for the Cougars now sits alongside a UCF team that immediately ran into trouble on both sides of the ball, with an offense that managed a season-low output and never found the end zone.
The bigger concern for UCF was how thoroughly Baylor controlled the game, piling up a season-high 501 yards and getting to the quarterback for seven sacks. Keyone Jenkins also left with an ankle injury, adding another layer of uncertainty to a night that already exposed some real issues up front and made the Knights earlier double-overtime win over BYU look even more fragile in hindsight. [Read more 🡒]
BYU Just Got The Halloween Setup Cougar Fans Wanted
Halloween at LaVell Edwards Stadium is lining up neatly for BYU fans, with the Cougars set to host Arizona State at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday. The early kickoff gives the home crowd a chance to take in football and still make it home in time for trick-or-treating, a tidy schedule for a BYU team that has climbed to No. 8 nationally and has been tough to beat at home.
Arizona State brings its own layer of intrigue, with the Sun Devils planning to start true freshmen at quarterback and running back. For BYU, it is another chance to protect its place in the national conversation before the College Football Playoff rankings debut soon, and the timing adds a little extra weight to a game that already has the feel of a November-looking test in late October. [Read more 🡒]
BYU Fans Just Got Pulled Back Into A Familiar Debate
The Pac-12s latest statement on fan behavior has brought an uncomfortable topic back into focus for BYU followers, especially with the conference saying it is reviewing ways to prevent religiously discriminatory chants from surfacing again. The issue flared during a Texas State football game, where Utah State student-athletes and fans were targeted, and it quickly became part of a broader conversation about how college football environments handle conduct that crosses the line.
For BYU fans, the frustration is familiar because similar chants have shown up at other games this season, including ones involving the Cougars and other Pac-12 member institutions. The conference says it plans to strengthen fan conduct standards, but the larger question is whether those measures will be enough to stop a pattern that keeps resurfacing in stadiums across the sport. [Read more 🡒]