Biff Poggi, the most successful high school football coach in Baltimore for more than two decades at St. Frances and Gilman, will leave his job on Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan staff to become head coach at Charlotte, the school announced Tuesday.
Poggi, 62, left St. Frances last year to become associate head coach for the Wolverines, who made the 2021 College Football Playoff before losing to Georgia in the Orange Bowl and are 10-0 this season. Running back Blake Corum, who starred for Poggi at St. Frances, is a leading Heisman Trophy candidate for Michigan.
Poggi, who did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment, will remain at Michigan through the end of this season, according to The Athletic.
“Joining the Charlotte 49ers is an incredible opportunity,” Poggi said in a Charlotte news release. “The great momentum created by the leadership of this University and its athletics program gives us every opportunity to build a successful pathway for so many young men in our region. For me, this is a full circle moment, a chance to pay forward the wonderful opportunities that were given to me as a young man. We can build a championship program at Charlotte, and I can’t wait to get started.”
An introductory press conference will be scheduled for next week, the release said.
“We are extremely fortunate to welcome Biff Poggi as our head football coach,” Charlotte Director of Athletics Mike Hill said in the release. “He is a transformational leader and has a sterling reputation as a coach, having had phenomenal success at the highest levels of college and high school football. But he is much more than that. He has demonstrated it by pouring himself into young men and communities, and the results have been spectacular. We are thrilled to have Biff and his wife, Amy, join Niner Nation and the Charlotte community.”
When Poggi left to work for Harbaugh for a second time (he also coached at Michigan in 2016), he called it “a chance to go one last time on a really big stage, to a legendary program.”
But he also said he would consider a college head coaching job if the right opportunity arose. Charlotte fired its coach, Will Healy, after a 1-7 start and appointed offensive line coach Pete Rossomando as an interim replacement. The 49ers have just one winning season since making the jump to the Football Bowl Subdivision level in 2015, going 7-6 and losing in the Bahamas Bowl in 2019, but will be joining the American Athletic Conference in 2023. So Poggi will face a significant building effort, a task he relished at St. Frances, where he conceived and funded the school’s ascent to the top of the Baltimore high school scene.
Poggi will make a return to Maryland when the Terps host Charlotte next season on Sept. 9.
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