ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The rules of Biff Poggi’s Wednesday night Bible study were clear: No phones allowed, unless there was blood or some family emergency involved.
The phone call Poggi is remembering didn’t fit either of those categories. When Poggi’s daughter told him Jim Harbaugh was on the line, it was enough to make Poggi put a bookmark in the Good Word and pick up the phone.
This was back in 2015, when Poggi was coaching high school football at the Gilman School in Baltimore. Poggi’s son, Henry, was playing for the Wolverines, but otherwise there wasn’t much pretext for Harbaugh’s phone call, which began with one of his famous non sequiturs.
“He said, ‘What do you think our record would have been last year had we punted the ball more?’ ” Poggi said. “I was like, ‘Jim, I don’t know.’ ”
Harbaugh eventually got to the point. He wanted Poggi to join Michigan’s staff and invited him to meet the team in Orlando, where the Wolverines were preparing to face Florida in the Citrus Bowl. That’s how Poggi ended up in a hotel room with Harbaugh, demonstrating blocking techniques on a dresser. (Note to aspiring coaches: If you want to work for Harbaugh, learn how to block a piece of furniture.)
“The dresser?” Poggi said. “It took a beating.”
Poggi, 66, has come and gone a few times since then, but his devotion to Michigan has never wavered. When the Wolverines need something, he always answers the call. On Saturday in Lincoln, Neb., he’ll answer his biggest call yet when he takes the helm for Michigan’s Big Ten opener, a game that could set the trajectory for the rest of Michigan’s season.
Poggi, Michigan’s associate head coach, was Sherrone Moore’s pick to lead the team while Moore serves a two-game suspension tied to the Connor Stalions sign-stealing investigation. Poggi’s limited-run engagement as Michigan’s head coach means a national CBS audience will get a close-up of one of college football’s most colorful characters when the Wolverines face the Cornhuskers.
It is a measure of Poggi’s respect for Michigan that the close-up will not include his bare biceps. When Poggi was coaching at St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, his signature sideline look was a tattered cutoff T-shirt. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel, while congratulating Poggi on his temporary gig as head coach, made sure to reiterate the school’s dress code.
“My friend Warde Manuel said, ‘Congratulations, coach, you’re wearing sleeves, no shorts and a cap,’ ” Poggi said. “That’s what went into it.”
When Poggi was the head coach at Charlotte, some members of the school’s administration shared similar thoughts. He’d often have a cigar in his hand at practice, and people weren’t thrilled about that, either. However, Poggi is unapologetically himself at all times, and anyone who tries to change him soon learns what they’re up against.
“He has a heart as big as anybody I’ve ever met in my life,” said Henry Russell, who played for Poggi at the Gilman School and coached with him at St. Frances. “He’s also going to speak his mind. He’s going to say what he thinks. He’s not going to hold anything back. Sometimes that rubs people the wrong way.”
Biff Poggi went 6-16 in less than two seasons at Charlotte. (Tommy Gilligan / Imagn Images)
Poggi’s blunt demeanor made him one of Harbaugh’s most trusted advisers, and it also contributed to his two-year flameout at Charlotte. Poggi comes from the world of finance and made his fortune running the investment firm Samuel James LTD. His management style is to call it like he sees it, without a lot of sugarcoating or soft-pedaling.
That’s precisely what Harbaugh needed when he called Poggi back to Michigan in 2021. Between his first stint at Michigan in 2016 and his return five years later, Poggi built St. Frances into a prep powerhouse that churned out a slew of Division I prospects, including former Michigan running back Blake Corum and current Wolverines Derrick Moore and Jaishawn Barham.
Poggi opened his heart and his wallet to kids in Baltimore who needed help, and not just the players on his team, either. He also provoked the ire of other coaches who accused him of turning St. Frances into a football factory. Angered by the lopsided scores and Poggi’s roster of out-of-state transfers, coaches in his league eventually refused to play him.
“He was helping kids at every school in town, and most people didn’t know it,” Russell said. “But don’t get me wrong, he loves to win, too. He’s ultra-competitive.”
That’s one thing Poggi and Harbaugh have in common. While Poggi can be blunt, he also has a knack for dealing with people. Running back Jordan Marshall described him as a “connector,” and that’s precisely what Harbaugh needed him to be.
It’s well documented that Harbaugh is not the most adept at recognizing social cues. Following a 2-4 season in 2020, Harbaugh recognized the need to reset the internal dynamics of his program. Poggi was the person who could tell Harbaugh the things his assistant coaches were afraid to say to him and translate Harbaugh to the people who struggled to connect with him.
“If Jim wanted to practice at 10 o’clock at night, Biff would tell him, ‘You can’t practice at 10 o’clock at night,’ s— like that,” said a person who worked with Poggi at Charlotte, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations. “The most important thing was, Jim trusted Biff to go in the coach’s office and close the door and tell him what he doesn’t want to hear.”
Poggi’s work for Harbaugh helped him land the head coaching job at Charlotte, a program that was 29-62 in its first eight years in the FBS. The 49ers had one winning season in that span, a 7-6 finish under Will Healy in 2019. The program needed an identity, and Poggi was the kind of disruptor who could give it one.
Quickly, though, Charlotte grew weary of the disruptions. Poggi pushed the school to invest more in the football program and, as he did at St. Frances, paid out of pocket for things he thought the program needed. He lobbied for more NIL money and raised $1.5 million himself. He continued to wear his cutoff T-shirts and smoke his cigars. His team struggled with discipline at times, prompting Poggi to suspend an undisclosed number of players after a loss to Florida Atlantic in 2023.
Charlotte finished 3-9 in Poggi’s first season. There were signs of progress in Year 2, but it came at a cost.
“He’s always been a maverick guy,” the Charlotte staffer said. “We broke a lot of glass at Charlotte.”
Poggi was fired eight games into his second season with a 6-16 record. The move blindsided him; just a few weeks earlier, Russell said, Poggi had seemed upbeat about the program’s direction. At Poggi’s low point, Moore called and invited him to attend Michigan’s game against Northwestern.
“I know he was hurt and disappointed,” Russell said. “I can’t remember a situation where Biff didn’t have success. He was very touched after he was let go that people from the Michigan community reached out immediately.”
Poggi declined to discuss his time at Charlotte but was adamant that he has no desire to be a head coach again. He said he’s happy being Michigan’s self-described “Italian grandpa” and serving as Moore’s sounding board. His return to Ann Arbor has been good for Michigan, and it’s been good for him, too.
“Quite frankly, I personally needed a little bit of Michigan healing,” he said.
Poggi wasn’t angling to be a head coach again, but when Moore asked him to fill during this two-game suspension, there was no way he could refuse. There’s a reason Moore brought him back to Ann Arbor and trusted him with his most challenging assignment yet, the role of head coach in a pressure-packed Big Ten opener.
When Michigan needs something, Poggi always answers the call.
“Michigan, to me, is honestly just like home,” Poggi said. “I feel like Dorothy in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ I just want to go home, and Michigan is that for me.”
(Photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
