SI's Thayer Evans is reporting that Michigan will hire Boston College defensive coordinator Don Brown in the same capacity at Michigan:

Boston College DC Don Brown will be Michigan's new DC per source.

— Thayer Evans (@ThayerEvansSI) December 20, 2015

Sam Webb has an unconfirmed report that Brown told BC's players he would depart today.

This is the first that Brown's name has come up in connection with the Michigan job, which goes to show how much this was on lockdown. I was momentarily disappointed and then I remembered spending much of the year mad at BC for having the audacity to  be above Michigan in the rankings.

This is not because they beat up on Howard and Maine. S&P ignores that stuff. Meanwhile let's play spot the outlier in Dalvin Cook's season:

15 for 54 is BC. everyone else got nuked except Georgia Tech, which managed the 17 for 82 above.

BC's defense finished the year third in S&P+ behind only FSU and Michigan despite having nowhere near the talent either of those two teams had *and* having the kind of crippling dysfunction on the other side of the ball that usually leads to late landslide victories. You know, the kind of offense that can do this:

Wake Forest 3, Boston College 0: It's okay to hate something you love sometimes

Football Study Hall's Ian Boyd wrote a feature on Brown's defense not five days ago. Read the whole thing but here's the nutshell version:

With a quick LB corps, safeties that can play multiple roles, and effective DL anchored by highly skilled tackles all of the schematics and skill sets on the Eagles' defense were able to pull together to form a dominant unit. They were hard to move the ball against on normal downs and then pure murder on 3rd and long. Too bad about that offense.

Brown doesn't fit Harbaugh's profile in that he's 60 and presumably not looking to move up, but as far as results go he's a very impressive hire. And he's a college guy, so thumbs up for that.