Bryce - you nailed it. Wolves are "charismatic megafauna" and grad students REALLY like to work on them. An unfortunate reality of modern science is that lots of grad students - and professors - see a very limited slice - perhaps genetic data from a few positions in the genome, or skull measurements - of the biology and ecology that is a species. There has been a rash of "freezer biologists" publishing studies that any ecologist - or educated trapper - would instantly recognize as, at best, incomplete and narrow. Another factor is funding - "endangered" and "biodiversity" and "human encroachment" and "habitat loss" are big buzzwords to NSF, the organization that funds a lot of research, and all can be applied to wolves.
There are something on the order of 15 coyote subspecies recognized. At least some of them are based on things like pelage color, and will almost certainly be collapsed upon further review. Some are probably valid, or could be further split, depending on your definition of a subspecies.
Like I said earlier, if these things were mice there would probably be one species that contains most of the current genus Canis, including wolves, coyotes, dogs, and most jackals.