Michigan coach Sherrone Moore has luxury of just being a coach

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Watching Sherrone Moore standing at midfield as coach of defending national champion Michigan, and as a Black man at the pinnacle of the enormous enterprise that is college football, a quote came to mind:

“I never had the luxury of just being a coach.”

I heard those words from John Thompson, the first Black coach to win a college basketball national championship, as we wrote his autobiography, I Came as a Shadow. Thompson, who died in 2020 at age 78, meant that after growing up under legal segregation and experiencing racial discrimination as an NBA player and then Georgetown University’s coach, he felt a responsibility to use coaching to advocate for equal opportunity in all walks of life.

Walks of life such as college football, where no Black coach has won a FBS national title. This is one of the last unfulfilled “firsts” in sports – but as Moore takes over at Michigan, he doesn’t seem to feel much burden from that history.

Is this a newfound luxury for Black coaches? A sign of progress? Maybe a bit of myopia? I went to Ann Arbor to find out. 

After Michigan beat Fresno State 30-10 on Aug. 31 to begin its season, I asked Moore at the postgame news conference: How do you feel about the opportunity to become the first Black coach to win a national championship?

“We got to win next week first. I don’t think about myself, I just think about these guys,” Moore said, sitting amid three of his players, one of them Black and two of them white. “I just want to be successful for our program for these guys. Yeah, the goal is to win the national title. But really it’s about the players that are sitting here and that are in that locker room.”

Hmmm. College football still has obvious problems with equal opportunity – only 16 of 134 coaches at the top level of competition are Black, compared with well over half of the players. Wouldn’t a Black coach winning a championship serve as a powerful example for university presidents and athletic directors who do the hiring? As reassurance for young Black coaches in the pipeline? As a rebuke to people now attacking the concept of diversity, while ignoring the effects of inequality? 

Thompson said in his book that he had to win, because “I knew that my success or failure would influence opportunities not only for other Black coaches, but for Black people in general.” 

But Moore’s environment is different. 

He’s 38 years old, born two years after Thompson won his championship in 1984. His parents immigrated from Trinidad and Tobago and his father joined the U.S. military. In the seventh grade, Moore moved from a majority Black New Jersey town to mostly white Derby, Kansas, outside of Wichita. Moore was 21 years old, and a backup offensive lineman at Oklahoma, when Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first Black president. Moore’s Oklahoma teammates and coaches rave about his intelligence and leadership. “He was born to be a coach,” teammate Gerald McCoy, an NFL Pro Bowler, said.

Last year, when Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended for three games at the end of the regular season amid a sign-stealing scandal, Moore stepped in and led Michigan to crucial wins over Penn State (he cried on television afterward), Maryland and archrival Ohio State. After Harbaugh left for the NFL, Moore got the top job. In only six seasons, Moore rose from coaching tight ends to coaching the offensive line to offensive coordinator to head coach. His talent and hard work were fairly rewarded.

Moore also sees other Black coaches at programs who can win it all – James Franklin at Penn State and Marcus Freeman at Notre Dame. The next tier includes DeShaun Foster at UCLA, Ryan Walters at Purdue, and Mike Locksley at Maryland. Deion Sanders could win a title when he takes over at Florida State – oops, I mean if the stars align at Colorado.

Thompson experienced inequality. Moore experienced opportunity.

The day after the Fresno State game, I interviewed Moore in his office. His demeanor was controlled, his eye contact exceptional. He’s about 6-foot-3, and a fit 260 pounds (down from over 300 as a player) from working out six days a week. It was Sunday morning, and the gospel song “I’d Rather Have Jesus” played softly in the background. On his feet were Jordan 11s – Michigan is a Jordan Brand school.

I asked Moore to consider what winning a title would mean for the Black community. “For the young men and women striving to do something that people say that they can’t do, I think that would put it in a different phase of understanding that if you want to go do something, you can,” he said. 

“I don’t put myself in any of it. It’s all about my players. But for America, I think it would be, they see these people on television, see the people the same color as you that are in these high-standing positions – if you really want to go do it, yeah, just go work for it.”

Moore also understood whose shoulders he stands on.

“Guys like John Thompson, guys like [Pittsburgh Steelers coach] Mike Tomlin have really helped and made it, I wouldn’t say easier, but made us as African American coaches in this day and age be able to be more of just a coach. Whereas those guys really had to strain and push through the hard times, had to win the Super Bowl … those guys going through the struggles and things they did has put us in the position we are at.”

Moore will face his own challenges, on and off the field. His starting quarterback is a former walk-on. Michigan’s offense looked questionable against Fresno State, which pulled within six points in the fourth quarter. Now they play Texas, which blasted Colorado State 52-0 on Aug. 31.

It’s harder to recruit at Michigan, which holds players to high academic standards and doesn’t cut pay-for-play NIL checks the same way an Alabama or an Oregon does.

Moore was suspended the first game of last season in Michigan’s self-imposed punishment for credible accounts that Harbaugh and his staff brought recruits to campus during the COVID-19 dead period. Now Moore is named in an NCAA notice of allegations for deleting a string of 52 text messages with the team analyst accused of stealing competitors’ signs. 

Championship in hand, Harbaugh skipped off to the pros as the NCAA prepared to penalize him and his program. Black folks have an old saying: Things have to be really bad for a Black person to be put in charge. Part of me fears that Moore will absorb whatever downturn lies ahead for the program, lose to Ohio State once or twice, then get replaced without getting a real chance. If Michigan can fire basketball coach and favorite son Juwan Howard, how safe can Moore be? 

When Thompson talked about luxury, he also was pointing out that white coaches are not asked or expected to advocate for racial equality. 

Today, Moore doesn’t need to be a freedom fighter. He can simply be a big game winner. That’s the kind of equality for Black coaches that Thompson hoped to see.