In December, the University of Michigan hired away a new head football coach from the University of Utah: the 66-year-old Kyle Whittingham. By more than a decade, Whittingham became the oldest football coach ever hired by the Ann Arbor school (as a comparison, the legendary Bo Schembechler was 39 when he began there). Nonetheless, Whittingham got a five-year contract.
Then last week, Michigan hired away from Syracuse University the 69-year-old Kent Syverud as its 16th president. He also got a five-year contract.
Whatever criticisms you may level at this great university, which has gone through a rough patch of late, ageism clearly cannot be one of them.
These are powerful, high-pressure jobs, at least one of which involves running up and down the sidelines of a football field. And while it’s not unusual to remain in such positions in the latter half of one’s 60s, it’s rare to get the chance then to start out in one of them.
Good for Michigan, say we.
Clearly, Michigan needed to fix the scandal-scarred hangover of the Jim Harbaugh era, ending with the firing of Sherrone Moore for having an inappropriate relationship with a young staffer. Whittingham certainly would fit the bill of a new mature presence at the head of a storied program.
Syverud becomes the third president of the University of Michigan in five years. Stability was at the top of the wishlist there, too.
University presidents these days face a variety of headaches, from restless and often radicalized faculty members to student-athletes now making millions of dollars (not to mention all the hangers-on) to an interfering federal administration in Washington, D.C.
Never has the job called more for a cool head and a deep reservoir of experience. Syverud, a Michigan alum and a legal scholar who led Syracuse for a dozen years, would seem to fit that bill.
“We’ve become an incredibly successful country, in part because because of having the best higher education system in the world,” he told the nonprofit news source Bridge Michigan, “and I think that’s particularly been true in the state of Michigan, and I’m worried we may be losing that for a whole host of reasons and we have to do our part to turn that around.” He also asked for help from everyone who cares about the school.
Smart. Humble. Wise. Measured. All of the best qualities in which older workers, seeking a third act, tend to specialize.
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