Report: Michigan Poaches Key Football Assistant Coach From Archrival Ohio State

He spent nine years with the Buckeyes staff under Urban Meyer and Ryan Day.

Michigan-Ohio State remains one of college football’s most heated rivalries.

It isn’t every day that you see someone make the jump directly from the Buckeyes to the Wolverines, but new Michigan coach Sherrone Moore reportedly dipped into Ryan Day’s staff to fill an assistant opening and is expected to hire away running backs coach Tony Alford, ESPN’s Pete Thamel reports. FootballScoop first reported that Alford was Michigan’s target for the job.

Alford has been a mainstay of the Ohio State coaching staff, serving as assistant head coach and running backs coach since 2015, two years before Ryan Day joined the staff under Urban Meyer. He’s coached a number of standout backs with the Buckeyes, including Ezekiel Elliott, J.K. Dobbins, Trey Sermon and most recently, TreVeyon Henderson. 

Alford will replace Mike Hart, a former star running back at Michigan, who is not being retained in 2024.

Alford, an Akron, Ohio, native, brings significant experience as running backs coach and as a recruiter in the Midwest. Prior to his job with the Buckeyes, he spent six years on staff at Notre Dame, and has previously coached at Louisville, Iowa State, Washington and Kent State.

The move is a big splash for Moore and echoes a similar one that Day made when he took over for Meyer in 2019. At that time, Day poached a pair of defensive assistants from Jim Harbaugh’s Wolverines staff—defensive line coach Greg Mattison (who became co-defensive coordinator at Ohio State) and linebackers coach Al Washington.

Those moves sent shockwaves through the Michigan program, with fellow assistant Chris Partridge calling out the decision and then-Wolverines star Aidan Hutchinson saying it made his “stomach turn,” per the Detroit Free Press.

With Michigan on the other side of the move, it shows that all is fair in love, war and college football.