Kentucky DBs coach, recruiting wiz Steve Clinkscale leaving for Michigan
University of Kentucky football assistant Steve Clinkscale, one of the top recruiters on UK’s staff since 2016, is leaving for a similar position at Michigan.
Sam Webb of The Michigan Insider, a 247Sports affiliate, first reported Tuesday afternoon that Clinkscale has accepted dual roles — defensive backs coach and passing game coordinator — with the Wolverines, who wanted to act quickly in replacing Maurice Linguist, their former co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach who recently was hired as the head coach at Buffalo.
UK later confirmed Clinkscale’s departure to the Herald-Leader.
Webb’s report said full terms of the deal weren’t available, but that Clinkscale agreed to a three-year contract that calls for him to be promoted to co-defensive coordinator beginning in the second year.
Clinkscale, a Youngstown, Ohio, native, was recently promoted to passing game coordinator at Kentucky, where he’s coached since 2016. He’s had a big hand in UK’s influx of talent from Detroit and other areas of Michigan, and was the lead recruiter of Justin Rogers, the crown jewel of UK’s 2020 recruiting class. Rogers as of May is the highest-ranked recruit to sign with Kentucky during the tenure of head coach Mark Stoops (current commit Kiyaunta Goodwin ranks slightly higher but cannot sign until December).
He was the lead recruiter of three current commits — Jeremiah Caldwell, Destin Wade and Keaten Wade — whom Rivals ranks as four-star prospects. Caldwell hails from Belleville, Mich., while the the Wade twins play near the Nashville area. Multiple players expected to start for Kentucky this season — Marquan McCall, DeAndre Square and Yusuf Corker — were recruited by Clinkscale out of high school.
“He is the dude,” Thomas Wilcher, the head coach at Cass Tech, where Square played, told 247Sports on Tuesday. “He’s a hell of a guy. He’s it. He holds down Detroit, I can tell you that right now. I think it’s that he goes in to build relationships, and he believes in the kids right away. He doesn’t wait for somebody to give him confirmation. He recognizes talent for what it is, that’s one big thing I see.”
Frank Buffano last season, and Dean Hood before him, helped coach Kentucky’s secondary, but Clinkscale got ample credit for the on-field development of its defensive backs. UK has ranked in the top-five among Southeastern Conference pass defenses each of the last three seasons — including No. 1 finishes in each of the last two seasons — and has produced four NFL Draft selections from its secondary over the last three drafts (Kelvin Joseph and Brandin Echols earlier this month, and Lonnie Johnson and Mike Edwards in 2019).
Clinkscale was entering the second year of a two-year contract extension that called for him to make $500,000 in each of those two seasons. Before coming to Kentucky, he was the defensive coordinator at Cincinnati. His only previous coaching stop in the Big Ten came when he coached defensive backs at Illinois in 2012.
This story was originally published May 11, 2021 at 12:55 PM.
