Sherrone Moore promised his mom he wouldn’t swear and promised himself he wouldn’t get emotional.
At least he kept the word he gave his mother. A composed, yet slightly tearful Moore described his feelings Saturday morning at the Junge Family Champions Center when he shook athletic director Warde Manuel’s hand and was officially announced as the 21st Michigan football coach in history.
“Speechless, happy, excited, anxious,” Moore began of his amalgamation of emotion. “Many things went through my head, but all I know is I wanted to get to work to continue what we’ve done because I’ve seen the path of what it’s taken to get there.”
It was a moment nearly two decades in the making for Moore, 37, who said as late as his upperclassmen years in high school he still thought he was going to go to the NBA to become the next Charles Barkley, until he realized a 6-foot-4 center wasn’t a thing in the NBA.
Standing at the podium in the pink socks with his dog’s face on them that his daughter Shiloh insisted he wear, he thanked her along with his wife Kelli, his other daughter, Solei, and his parents watching at home on TV in Kansas for their unwavering support.
Moore went through the list of those who helped guide him to this moment. He began with his coaches from high school and then from his days as a Juco offensive lineman at Butler (Kansas) Community College, before he described the exact moment he knew he wanted to be a head coach.
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That came in the spring going into his senior at Oklahoma, when he played for Hall of Famer Bob Stoops. Moore remembered one day he and his teammates stood in a stretching line and he watched the coach pace the rows up and down, interacting with players one after another.
“I wanted to guide people, wanted to shape them,” Moore recalled of his thought process. “That was the moment it clicked. I started to study the game deeper, not just what my position was doing, but others.”
He honed his skills for five years at Louisville — first as a graduate assistant for three seasons, then the final two as tight ends coach — before he took over the same position at Central Michigan.
But everything really changed for Moore when he went in for his first interview with Jim Harbaugh, a day he said he’ll never forget. Moore spoke with Jim, as well as Jack Harbaugh, Jay Harbaugh, Don Brown, Pep Hamilton and perhaps one more coach.
He’d always been instructed to be his authentic self in an interview, and that’s exactly what Moore did.
“First thing I did was I took off my jacket, I took the chair out and showed how to run block,” Moore laughed. “Obviously, you guys know coach, he was right there. He got up, tightened his belt. He wanted me to run block him, he pulled in another guy and was like ‘go ahead, base drive him, run-block him’ I was like ‘I’m gonna knock him out if I do that.'”
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The meeting lasted 5 hours, one of the best Moore ever had, when Harbaugh went full Harbaugh.
“We went into film and was like ‘yeah, you want to spend the night’,” Moore recalled. “I’m like, ‘Coach, I came in a suit’. He goes ‘Yeah, we’ll go downstairs, get you some gear, it’d be great’. So I spent the night, got the job the next day.”
As they say, the rest is history.
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Becoming a play caller
Moore made the leap from tight ends coach (2018-20) to coaching the offensive line and sharing co-offensive coordinating duties (2021-22) for a pair of seasons, before this last year when he became the sole offensive coordinator and for the first time was tasked with play-calling duties.
How’d that go?
Michigan didn’t trail for a single minute in the second half of a regular season game this year, and the man with a mentality and philosophy of “smash” orchestrated an attack that saw Blake Corum set a record for touchdowns and finished No. 14 nationally (35.9 points per game) in scoring.
While there’s never a guarantee going from coordinator to head coach will be a slam dunk, rarely if ever does somebody get the on-the-job training that Moore was afforded last season.
Harbaugh was suspended twice for three games, each for two separate NCAA investigations, and Moore was tabbed to lead one of the first three games (Bowling Green) and then all three of the final games of the year — at Penn State, at Maryland, vs. Ohio State — with the season on the line.
“The man auditioned four games,” Manuel said. “The first one y’all blew off like ‘Warde could coach that one,’ no I couldn’t have, but y’all couldn’t blow off what he did on the road against Penn State and you definitely can’t blow off what he did against Ohio State.”
“When I look back at those games and I tell you what, to see how he did against Maryland in a tough situation. To see that, on the road. I mean it’s all been impressive. So I think what I’ve hired is the person who led those four games.”
Of course, there’s much more to being a head coach than simply being the one to talk to the refs and make the critical calls on Saturday.
Moore has long been seen as an ace recruiter in Ann Arbor and he plans to take that same mentality with him as the head man, even though time will be fewer and farther between.
That’s not to mention speaking with donors, regents and fans, a focus on academics and compliance, maintaining an open line of communication with the AD and the president − oh, and that one thing that’s pretty big these days, NIL.
“I wanted to hear his response to that. … the additional things he’ll have to do beyond being a head coach,” Manuel said. “I don’t want to know what Jim’s plan was and every answer to the question was ‘I’m going to do what Jim did.’ I wanted to know what Sherrone thinks.
“So that’s where the two-and-a-half hours of conversations about that occurred, about things in totality for a head coach to deal with and he did an excellent job.”
Manuel said Saturday he did look at other people “in terms of, if I had to open this up, where would I go” but said all along Moore was a main target. Manuel promised Moore before Harbaugh made the announcement that he would be the very first person he sat down with.
That happened Thursday morning, just more than 12 hours after Harbaugh made his decision to head to Los Angeles to join the Chargers. Not much more than 36 hours later, Manuel called Moore into his office, the two finalized the paperwork.
Not only is he the 21st Michigan football coach of all time, but Moore is now the first Black head coach to lead the program. Both he and Manuel, also a Black man, expressed what it meant to be able to be a part of such an important piece of history in the department.
“It had no bearing on the decision, but I understand the magnitude of choosing him,” Manuel said. “This institution is 207 years old, this is Team 145 coming up, 145 years and it’s the first black man, person, to take the reins. As someone who understands history, I feel great about it because he’s ready.”
“An honor, a privilege, something I don’t take lightly, Moore said. “I just wanted to show them, you can do it, regardless of being African American, or white, if you’re a good coach and work your tail off, dreams can come true. I want to be an inspiration to people who have that vision and want to do that.”
Moore met with players Saturday morning and said his foremost immediate priority is putting together a staff. Atop that list, keeping strength and conditioning coach Ben Herbert, but it remains to be seen if that can happen.
Also undecided is whether Moore will continue to hold onto play-calling duties.
“Haven’t decided yet, probably not,” Moore said. “But got a good idea of who we’ll put in that position.”
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Being Sherrone, not Jim
Though Moore did invoke one of Harbaugh’s lines of bringing “enthusiasm unknown to mankind” with him every day, he also said multiple times he is not and cannot be Jim Harbaugh.
The way to continue to win, in Moore’s mind, is to blend the continuity of what Harbaugh had in place, with the vision of what Moore sees as the future. Currently, Michigan is on top of the mountain. Quite literally every single team in college football wants to be where U-M is.
Moore’s sole focus is on staying there.
“We’re going to operate this thing from now on in three phases: the process, the pursuit, the standard,” Moore said. “We’ve already started the process, we continue to talk about the process over the prize. The prize we got, but we’re hungry for more. Now we’re in the pursuit, the pursuit of greatness and to do that you’ve got to push, you’ve got to strain and do it every single day on and off the field.
“That will take you to the standard and once we continue to win on and off the field, then we will become the standard. That’s the goal here at the University of Michigan, nothing less.”
