Former Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh is not quite done purging the staff of his alma mater.
Late Monday evening, Christina DeRuyter, previously the director of football operations at U-M who also held an integral role in the recruiting department, announced she is heading to join Harbaugh as the next director of football logistics in Los Angeles.
Or, as DeRuyter put it on her social media post, “Michigan West.”
“Forever grateful for the last 3 life changing years @UMichFootball,” her post began. “3x BIG10 Champs, 3 Wins vs OSU, Natty Champs, countless relationships & memories made. I’m thrilled to join Coach Harbaugh at the Chargers (Michigan West) as the Director of Football Logistics. BOLT UP⚡️& GO BLUE〽️”
Current wide receiver I’Marion Stewart responded to the tweet saying “I was looking for you today” before she replied it “hurt my heart” not to be in Ann Arbor any longer.
The move continues what has been a mass exodus from Ann Arbor to Los Angeles for those affiliated with last year’s team.
When Harbaugh left just weeks after helping lead the Wolverines to their first 15-0 season in program history and its first out-right national championship since 1949, he took with him nearly the entire defensive coaching staff.
Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter, his father Rick Minter (who served as an analyst much of the past two years before finishing last year as interim linebackers coach), defensive line coach Mike Elston, and defensive backs coach Steve Clinkscale, despite the wide-held belief he would stay on staff at Michigan.
That is without mentioning edge specialist Dylan Roney or strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert, who Harbaugh called the "X-factor for years" and whose name he was shouting to come join him when confetti rained down at NRG Stadium in Houston.
“People have choices to make, man,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel told the Free Press in a sit down earlier this spring. “Jim knows what he wants to do at the Chargers, he made the offers and people had decisions to make. The mark of great success of people is when they come to a program or organization and leave it better than they found it. Jim did that. Those coaches did that. Whomever from the staff wants to go with Jim, I’m not going to have any animosity toward them.
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“As I told Sherrone (Moore) as we were dealing with it, on the flip side, ‘Look, now you can make it the way you want to make it, whatever that is,’ and he’s done that and I believe has a great staff he’s put together across the board.”
Manuel said the department was instead focused on adding new, young talent to the mix, which seems to have happened this past week. Over the past few days, the Wolverines announced the addition of a handful of new analysts and recruiting staffers.
Two of the new analysts, Reid Kuhn and Richard Perry, recently studied at Michigan, while the other faces come from some of the top football programs in the country like Preston Sagan (Clemson), Aidan Young (Oregon), Jacob Weber (Indiana) Jack Turner (Wake Forest), and Jacob Sakk (Pittsburgh).
Also as part of the staff movement, Albert Karschnia has taken over as director of player personnel, while Sam Popper, previously the assistant, will fill Karschnia's previous role as director of recruiting. It comes in the same time frame as Michigan nabbed a Michigan State graduate, Kayli Johnson, the older sister of All-American DB Will Johnson, to take over DeRuyter's role, according to her social media profile.
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Johnson was Rutgers’ assistant director of recruiting operations under Greg Schiano last year and an operations intern with the Detroit Lions the year before that, which comes after a standout track career at Michigan State (undergrad) and Texas Tech (grad school).
There’s hope around the program the influx of young talent can help kick start a month of June that is going to be incredibly important in terms of creating the foundation of U-M’s 2025 high school recruiting class.
Currently, Michigan has just five verbal commits, three of whom were pledged to the previous regime. As a group, Michigan ranks No. 41 in the nation, per 247Sports composite rankings.
