ANN ARBOR, Mich. – As the coach of national champion Michigan and as a Black man at the pinnacle of the mammoth enterprise that is college football, watching Sherone Moore stand at midfield, one quote came to mind.
“I’ve never had the luxury of just working as a coach.”
I heard these words from John Thompson, the first black coach to win a national championship in college basketball, while writing his autobiography, “I Came as a Shadow.” Thompson, who passed away in 2020 at age 78, grew up under legal segregation and experienced racism as an NBA player and coach at Georgetown University, which led him to feel a responsibility to advocate for equal opportunity in all walks of life through his coaching.
In a world like college football, where no black coach has ever won an FBS national title, it’s one of the last remaining “firsts” in sports, but when Moore took over at Michigan, he didn’t seem too burdened by that history.
Is this a new luxury for black coaches? A sign of progress? Or a bit shortsighted? I went to Ann Arbor to find out.
After Michigan opened its season with a 30-10 win over Fresno State on Aug. 31, I asked Coach Moore in the postgame press conference, “How do you feel about your chances of becoming the first Black coach to win a national championship?”
“First of all, we have to win next week. I don’t think about myself, I just think about my players,” said Moore, sitting amid one black and two white players. “I want to be successful for my players, I want to be successful for my team. Yes, the goal is to win the national championship, but it’s really about these guys sitting here, these guys in this locker room.”
Hmm. College football still has clear problems with equal opportunity. Only 16 of the 134 coaches at the top level of the game are black, but more than half of the players are black. Wouldn’t a black coach winning be a powerful example to college presidents and athletic directors in charge of recruiting? A reassurance to promising young black coaches? A rebuke to those who attack the notion of diversity while ignoring the impact of inequality?
In his book, Thompson writes that he had to win because he “knew that my success or failure would affect the opportunities not only of other black coaches but of black people in general.”
But Moore’s circumstances are different.
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Moore, 38, was born two years after Thompson won in 1984. His parents emigrated from Trinidad and Tobago, and his father enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the seventh grade, Moore moved from a predominantly black town in New Jersey to Derby, Kansas, a predominantly white suburb of Wichita. Moore was 21 and a reserve offensive lineman at Oklahoma State when Barack Obama was elected the first black president of the United States. Moore’s Oklahoma teammates and coaches praise his intelligence and leadership. “He was born to be a coach,” said NFL Pro Bowl teammate Gerald McCoy.
When Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended three games at the end of the regular season last year for a sign-stealing scandal, Moore took over and led Michigan to key wins over Penn State (Moore was in tears on television after the game), Maryland (Michigan’s 1,000th win, the most of any team in history), and archrival Ohio State. After Harbaugh left for the NFL, Moore took the top job. In just six seasons, Moore rose from tight ends coach to offensive line coach to offensive coordinator to head coach. His talent and hard work have been well-deservedly rewarded.
Moore sees other black coaches with championship potential, including Penn State’s James Franklin and Notre Dame’s Marcus Freeman. In the next tier are UCLA’s DeShawn Foster, Purdue’s Ryan Walters and Maryland’s Mike Locksley. Florida State’s Deion Sanders could win a championship at Colorado State, or if he gets lucky there.
Thompson experienced inequality; Moore experienced opportunity.
I interviewed Moore in his office the day after the Fresno State game. His demeanor was calm and his eye contact was excellent. He’s about 6’3″ tall and weighs 260 pounds (he weighed more than 300 as a player) after training six days a week. It was a Sunday morning, and the gospel song “I’d Rather Have Jesus” was playing softly in the background. On his feet were Jordan 11s. Michigan is a Jordan Brand school.
I asked Moore to consider what winning the title would mean to the black community: “I think for young men and women who are trying to do things that people say they can’t do, winning the title would just take them to a new level of understanding that if they want to do something, they can do it,” he said.
“I’m not involved in that. It’s all about my players. But for America, I think seeing these people on TV and seeing people of your skin color in high positions, if that’s what you really want to do, then yeah, just work for it.”
Moore also understood whose shoulders he stood on.
“Guys like John Thompson and guys like (Pittsburgh Steelers head coach) Mike Tomlin really helped me out and, I wouldn’t say it made it easier, but it made it more of a coaching experience for me as an African-American coach in this day and age. They really had to work their way through tough times and win a Super Bowl…It’s what they struggled and accomplished that got us to where we are today.”
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Moore will face his own challenges on and off the field. His starting quarterback is a former walk-on. Michigan’s offense was questionable against Fresno State, trailing by six points in the fourth quarter. Next up is Texas, which beat Colorado State 52-0 on Aug. 31.
Michigan makes it harder to recruit players because it holds players to high academic standards and doesn’t write NIL checks for playing time like Alabama and Oregon do.
Moore was suspended for last season’s opener as a self-imposed punishment by Michigan after it received credible information that Harbaugh and his staff had brought freshmen to campus during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Moore is named in an NCAA notice of charges for deleting 52 text messages with a team analyst who allegedly stole signs from a rival.
With a championship under his belt, Harbaugh went pro as the NCAA prepared to penalize him and his team. There’s an old saying about black people: “Things have to be really bad for a black guy to coach.” I worry that Moore will take the team’s future slump and lose a loss or two to Ohio State before being replaced without a real chance. If Michigan can fire popular basketball coach Juwan Howard, how safe can Moore be?
In speaking about luxury, Thompson also noted that white coaches are not asked or expected to advocate for racial equality.
Today, Moore doesn’t have to be a freedom fighter. He can simply be a big-game winner. That’s the kind of equality Thompson wanted for black coaches.