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'It's great to be back home': Ex-Michigan star Tyrone Wheatley jumps at Wayne State job

Tony Paul
The Detroit News

Detroit — Tyrone Wheatley's football career, from his playing days to his coaching days, has been quite a journey, taking him all over the country, and at all different levels.

But there's nothing like coming home.

"It's great to be back home. I love home. I love Michigan," Wheatley said. "My dream goal was always to be a head coach, and what better place to be a head coach than back in your backyard?"

Wheatley, who starred at Dearborn Heights Robichaud and the University of Michigan, has been named the 20th head coach in Wayne State football history. The university made the announcement Thursday, shortly after Wheatley held a Zoom meeting with players and staff. He succeeds Paul Winters, who was fired in December after a 19-year run leading the Division II program.

This marks the 10th stop on Wheatley's coaching journey, which began in high school and also included stops in the NFL, the Football Bowl Subdivision, the Football Championship Subdivision and Division III.

He comes to Wayne State after working one season as running backs coach of the NFL's Denver Broncos, where he was consistently razzed by players and coaches for wearing Red Wings, Pistons and Lions hats in the team facilities. He's also worked for the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars in the NFL, though he said Thursday that leaving the pro game wasn't a difficult decision.

"Not tough at all. I think what's tough is leaving the people, not the logo," Wheatley said in an interview with The Detroit News shortly after the school's announcement. He will be formally introduced at a campus press conference next Thursday. "I'll miss the people. Is it hard from that point — yeah, I'm gonna miss the people. I call them my guys. They're my guys. I'm gonna miss them, but not the NFL.

"The reason why I separate the two is because of the opportunity.

"You have to do what's best for you."

This will be the second head-coaching job for Wheatley, after he was head coach of Morgan State of the FCS from 2019-21, a tough tenure sandwiched around the COVID-19 pandemic that canceled one season for the HBCU in Baltimore. He also was head coach at his alma mater, Robichaud, for one season, 2007, to start his coaching career, which also has included stints on staff at Michigan (2015-16), Eastern Michigan (2009) and Syracuse (2010-12). He was with the Bills from 2013-14 and the Jaguars from 2017-18. He also spent a year at Division III Ohio Northern.

Tyrone Wheatley was a standout running back at Dearborn Heights Robichaud and the University of Michigan and has been coaching for 16 years.

This will be his 10th coaching stop, and perhaps his most challenging, given Wayne State's struggles in recent years. The Warriors were 3-18 the last two years, after the 2020 season was canceled.

Wayne State also plays in Division II's top conference, the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, home of state rivals Ferris State — the two-time defending national champion — and Grand Valley State, another traditional powerhouse.

"I don't really think of them as challenges, no matter where you are, even in the NFL. I just call it competition and overcoming the circumstances," said Wheatley, 51. "They (Ferris and Grand Valley) set the standard. ... What you have to overcome is really finding your niche and building the culture and making sure that you take the right guys to build your program. We want to try to put a fence around Detroit and keep those guys home and recruit our butts off in the state. Grand Valley and Ferris do a great job with that.

"I wouldn't say win the recruiting battle, but getting the guys that are right for your program, the standard, whatever the standard I set, let's make sure we get those guys."

Recruiting, of course, is the lifeblood of college athletics — and Wheatley acknowledged his resume will get him into a lot of doors; what he does after that is up to him — but the game's changed over the years, no more drastically than in recent years, with the evolution of the transfer portal and NIL.

Wheatley, an Inkster native, acknowledges those circumstances, but also has his own philosophy on who to recruit. And, often, it doesn't start with who's the most talented.

He plans to stress education, which has played a big role in his career arc after he went back to school and earned his degree from Michigan in 2008.

"You can't play this game forever," Wheatley said. "There's life after football. What do you want to do with life after football? ... These young men and their families need to understand the reason they're going to college is to get an education, right? People always say, 'Have a Plan B'. No. Plan A is education, and Plan B is football. We want those who want to be student-athletes, not just athletes."

Contract details for Wheatley weren't immediately available Thursday. Winters made more than $200,000 a year. Wheatley hasn't made any decisions yet on his coaching staff.

This is the first major hire for interim athletic director Erika Wallace, who took over following Rob Fournier's retirement in November. Fournier had been placed on administrative leave when Wallace took over.

The Wayne State search took seven weeks — six weeks longer than it recently took Grand Valley State to promote Scott Wooster to succeed Matt Mitchell, who's leaving for a job on Luke Fickell's staff at Wisconsin.

"I am beyond excited to welcome Coach Wheatley and his family to the Wayne State community," Wallace said in a statement Thursday. "Coach Wheatley has a passion for developing the student-athlete not only on the field, but off. His ability to mentor men, develop talent, and recruit will elevate our football program.

"I'm looking forward to watching his leadership as he guides our Warrior student-athletes into a new era."

Wheatley is considered by many to be the greatest high-school football player in Michigan history, playing as many as eight different positions and leading Robichaud to the 1990 state championship.

He went on to Michigan, where he played four years and was All-Big Ten three times (1992-94). As a sophomore at Michigan, he was the Big Ten's offensive player of the year, then rushed for 235 yards in the Rose Bowl to earn the game's MVP award.

Wheatley, a member of the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame, also ran track and field in high school, where he was a seven-time individual champion, and at Michigan, where he was All-America.

His specialty was hurdles. He crossed another hurdle Thursday, one that has brought him home to the delight of wife, Kimberly, and their five children, one of whom, Tyrone Jr., plays offensive tackle for the Cleveland Browns.

"You grow with each experience, because guess what, every experience is different," said Wheatley, who was a first-round pick by the New York Giants in the 1995 NFL Draft and played 10 pro seasons, finishing his career with the Oakland Raiders. "Every job has different circumstances, different resources, different everything.

"You grow with every job."

Now, he gets the chance to grow where he grew up.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tonypaul1984