Glenn Edward "Bo" Schembechler, Jr. (April 1, 1929 – November 17, 2006) was an American football player, coach, and athletics administrator. He served as the head football coach at Miami University from 1963 to 1968 and at the University of Michigan from 1969 to 1989, compiling a career record of 234–65–8. Only Joe Paterno and Tom Osborne have recorded 200 victories in fewer games as a coach in major college football. In his 21 seasons as the head coach of the Michigan Wolverines, Schembechler's teams amassed a record of 194–48–5 and won or shared 13 Big Ten Conference titles. Though his Michigan teams never won a national championship, in all but one season they finished ranked, and 16 times they placed in the final top ten of both major polls.

Schembechler played college football as a tackle at Miami University, where in 1949 and 1950 he was coached by Woody Hayes, for whom he served as an assistant coach at Ohio State University in 1952 and from 1958 to 1962. In his first ten years at Michigan, Schembechler's teams squared off in a fierce rivalry against Hayes's Buckeyes squads. During that stretch in the Michigan–Ohio State football rivalry, dubbed the "Ten-Year War," Hayes and Schembechler's teams won or shared the Big Ten Conference crown every season and usually each placed in the national rankings.

Billy Taylor (July 24, 1921 – December 28, 2010) was an American jazz pianist, composer, broadcaster and educator. He was the Robert L. Jones Distinguished Professor of Music at East Carolina University in Greenville, and since 1994, he was the artistic director for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Taylor was a Jazz activist. He sat on the Honorary Founders Board of The Jazz Foundation of America. In 1989, Billy Taylor, Ann Ruckert, Herb Storfer and Phoebe Jacobs started The Jazz Foundation to save the homes and the lives of America's elderly jazz and blues musicians, later including musicians that survived Hurricane Katrina.

Billy Taylor was also one of the foremost jazz educators. He lectured in colleges, served on panels and travelled worldwide as a jazz ambassador. Critic Leonard Feather once said, "It is almost indisputable that Dr. Billy Taylor is the world's foremost spokesman for jazz."

Taylor was born in Greenville, North Carolina but moved to Washington, D.C. when he was five. He grew up in a musical family and learned to play different instruments as a child, including guitar, drums and saxophone. But he was most successful at the piano and took classical piano lessons with Henry Grant, the same teacher that had educated Duke Ellington a generation earlier. He made his first professional appearance playing keyboard at the age of 13 and the compensation was one dollar. Taylor attended Dunbar High School, America's first high school for African American students. He went to Virginia State College and majored in sociology. Pianist Dr. Undine Smith Moore noticed young Taylor's talent in piano and he changed his major to music, graduating with a degree in music in 1942.

Jim Brandstatter (born in East Lansing, Michigan) is an award-winning American sportscaster based in Southeastern Michigan. He is currently the radio color commentator for the Detroit Lions and Michigan Wolverines football teams. Brandstatter is also a sports television show host and radio show host; both shows are about Michigan football. He played college football for the Wolverines, where he was a standout offensive tackle. Brandstatter has written two non-fiction books about his experiences as a player, both of which were best-sellers in the sports category. His other positions include the two-time president of the Detroit Sports Broadcasters Association.

Brandstatter was born and raised in East Lansing, Michigan, the home of Michigan State University. He was one of 5 boys. His father Art Brandstatter, Sr. was named an All-American fullback for the Spartans football team in 1936. His father went on to become a Detroit Police officer and later a chairman of the Michigan State University School of Criminal Justice. His older brother, Art Brandstatter, Jr., played defensive end for the Spartans from 1959-1961. Despite the family's legacy at MSU, Brandstatter opted to attend the school's in-state rival the University of Michigan (the teams play annually for the coveted Paul Bunyan Trophy). When asked about his early life and family in a November 2007 Detroit Free Press interview, Brandstatter responded: "My brother Art played at Michigan State, and he was my hero. ... I went to all the games. I got to know all the players, the team. I was just a 10-year-old kid. That was great, but when I got into high school and was playing, Michigan recruited me and I fell in love with the place. ... So I went against the grain, went to Michigan and never regretted it."

Leslie Edwin "Les" Miles, nicknamed "The Mad Hatter", (born November 10, 1953) is an American college football coach and the current head coach of the LSU football team. Prior to holding that position, he was head coach at Oklahoma State. He was formerly an assistant at Oklahoma State as well as Michigan, Colorado, and the Dallas Cowboys. Miles has held the head coaching position at LSU since January 2005 and coached the Tigers to a win in the 2008 BCS National Championship Game against Ohio State, 38–24. On 26 August 2011, his contract was extended to 2017.

Miles earned all-state honors in football at Elyria High School in Ohio as well as letters in baseball and wrestling. He attended the University of Michigan where he was a two-year letterman under Coach Bo Schembechler from 1974 to 75. In 1980, Miles returned to Michigan as an assistant coach to Schembechler. He left Michigan in 1982 to coach at the University of Colorado where fellow Michigan assistant Bill McCartney had just been named head coach. Coincidentally, one of his fellow assistants on the Colorado staff was another future LSU head coach, Gerry DiNardo, who coached at LSU from 1995–99.

Lloyd H. Carr (born July 30, 1945) is a former American football player and coach. He served as the head coach at the University of Michigan from 1995 through the 2007 season. Under Carr, the Wolverines compiled a record of 122–40 and won or shared five Big Ten Conference titles (1997, 1998, 2000, 2003, and 2004). Carr's 1997 team was declared the national champion by the Associated Press. His record coaching against top ten-ranked opponents was 19–8. Carr was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 2011.

Born in Hawkins County, Tennessee, Carr moved with his family to Riverview, Michigan when he was ten years old. Carr's picture is still shown in the Riverview Community High School gym lobby, where he quarterbacked the Pirates to a 1962 State Championship. A talented athlete, Carr played college football and college baseball for three seasons at the University of Missouri, and one season at Northern Michigan University (NMU) while earning his M.A. in education administration. He was a star quarterback at NMU and led the Wildcats to an undefeated season in 1967. Carr had originally played under Dan Devine at Missouri, following fellow Riverview graduates Woody Widenhofer and Bill McCartney. Carr transferred to Northern Michigan when the man who chiefly recruited him to Missouri, Rollie Dotsch, was named head coach.