Football coach Sherrone Moore fired by Michigan, reportedly detained by police
In yet another coaching upheaval at a college football empire, Michigan on Wednesday announced the firing of second-year coach Sherrone Moore, three weeks ahead of the Wolverines’ bowl game against Texas in Orlando. It’s the 10th coaching change in the Big Ten or SEC this fall, and it’s the most shocking of the lot.
“Sherrone Moore has been terminated, with cause, effective immediately,” Athletic Director Warde Manuel said in a statement with a specificity unusual for such statements. “Following a university investigation, credible evidence was found that Coach Moore engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. This conduct constitutes a clear violation of university policy, and UM maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.”
Later Wednesday, ESPN reported Moore was being detained by Michigan police. “The City of Saline Police Department assisted in locating and detaining former University of Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore,” the department said in a statement released to ESPN. “Mr. Moore was turned over to the Pittsfield Township Police Department for investigation into potential charges.”
Efforts by The Washington Post to independently confirm Moore’s detention have been unsuccessful.
The ordeal ended the 39-year-old Moore’s blip as the Michigan coach who succeeded Jim Harbaugh, and it ended just two days after Moore held a news conference to discuss Michigan’s new recruiting class as well as its bowl game. He stood with his calm confidence before reporters and said of his 9-3 squad: “I’m proud of the team. It’s a very young team. I continue to say it, and you go back and watch game by game, you saw it was getting better and better and better.” He concluded his program stood “at a really good foundation of where we need to be but, you know, we’ve got a lot to work on.”
A mere two days after that, it wasn’t his program anymore, and Michigan’s 27-9 loss to Ohio State on Nov. 29 wound up as his final game after eight seasons with the program in varying roles but always pointed upward, including Michigan’s improvement from 8-5 in his first full season as coach to 9-3 in his second. Now Biff Poggi, the associate head coach, will lead the Wolverines against Texas, a situation familiar to Michigan’s populous fans given Poggi filled in for Moore for two games this fall as Moore served a suspension related to Michigan’s sign-stealing ruckus.
By firing Moore for cause, Michigan would hope to avoid the kind of seven- or eight-figure buyout that has hovered over many other programs who have jettisoned coaches this fall. The timing, however, did leave Michigan running very late in the area of a coaching search, as the other big programs already completed theirs.
Unlike Harbaugh, Moore had not grown up a Michigan man. He hailed from Derby, Kansas, and played on the offensive line at Butler Community College in Kansas and then at Oklahoma. Once Harbaugh hired him from Central Michigan after the 2017 season, Moore worked three Michigan seasons as tight ends coach, two as offensive coordinator and offensive line coach, and one (2023) with both those roles plus four games as acting head coach, including three to close out the regular season while Harbaugh served a Big Ten suspension for the sign-stealing affair.
In those closing three games, Moore led wins at Penn State, at Maryland and at home against Ohio State, getting his loudest note for his postgame TV interview just after the Wolverines won, 24-15, at Penn State with a pulverizing second half in which Michigan showed its might with 32 consecutive running plays. Harbaugh’s suspension had become official that morning, and emotions soared. As the longtime assistant Moore began a practice unfamiliar to him, the on-field interview with a rights-holding TV reporter, in this case Jenny Taft of Fox, he wept. “I want to thank the Lord,” he finally began, then said, “I want to thank Coach Harbaugh. ... Did this for you.”
Once Michigan finished 15-0 and won that national championship in Houston, Harbaugh left 16 days later for the Los Angeles Chargers, and two days after that, Moore got the nod to follow Harbaugh. “I have been preparing my entire coaching career for this opportunity,” he said on Jan. 26, 2024, “and I can’t think of a better place to be head coach than at the University of Michigan.” He promised “a tough, physical, disciplined, hungry, championship-level team that loves football and plays with passion for the game.”
As Michigan struggled a bit more than it had of late - Harbaugh had gone 40-3 in his closing three seasons - Moore started toward what would become a 17-8 tenure at the helm, with Moore himself going 15-8 if discounting the suspended games. He did have one colossal win in the brief span, when his 6-5 team went to Columbus as a three-touchdown underdog on Nov. 30, 2024, and scored a bewildering 13-10 upset of an eventual national champion.
That postgame also grew noteworthy. Michigan aimed to plant its flag at Ohio State’s midfield, leading to scuffling among players and pepper spray from police. The idea of a repeat of that fiasco looked plausible two weeks ago in Ann Arbor after Ohio State’s win, but Buckeyes Coach Ryan Day said his team would not be flag-planting and asked Moore to remove his team first. Moore complied, with nobody assuming that would become his last on-field act as Michigan coach.