The tragic unraveling of former Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore

Sherrone Moore woke up Wednesday morning as the head football coach at the University of Michigan. He was an up-and-comer, a beacon light for so many aspiring young African American coaches.

By the end of the day on Wednesday, Moore was the Wolverines’ former head coach after being abruptly fired. The university issued a statement. An internal investigation “found there was sufficient evidence that Moore engaged in an “inappropriate relationship with a staff member.”

The statement continued: “This conduct constitutes a clear violation of university policy, and U-M maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.”

The news only got worse and the shock deepened. By Thursday evening Moore was not only fired, but was in custody at a local police station pending an investigation of assault.

The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office said the former Michigan coach remained in custody. “The matter involving Mr. Moore remains under active investigation by law enforcement, and as a result, we do not expect charging decisions or an arraignment today. Mr. Moore remains in custody at the Washtenaw County Jail.”

The most unpleasant part of these stories is having to swim through the murky slime of social media, picking through the rubble and separating fact from fiction.

As details continue to pour in from multiple directions, the implications of this bizarre story on the eve of the college football bowl season are overwhelming. Wednesday’s sudden firing was a stunning end to Moore’s steady climb up the coaching ladder, first at Louisville, then Central Michigan, and finally Michigan, where he arrived in 2018 as a tight ends coach.

Seven years later, at age 38, he became a head coach in a big-time football industry that values athletic young Black bodies but is reluctant to invest in Black bodies as head coaches.

The other potential casualty of the Moore fiasco could be Warde Manuel, the Michigan athletic director who hired Moore as head coach in 2024. Warde is one of only a handful of African-American athletic directors at a Power Four institution.

According to one report, the administration — Manuel — knew that Moore was dealing with mental health issues, yet Moore was fired with no HR representative or security present.

This is not only a line-in-the-sand code of conduct at the University of Michigan, but also an established code of conduct at corporate institutions across the land. Moore stands accused of engaging in the type of inappropriate relationship that has been a no-fly zone for decades.

Moore, married with three children, should’ve known better. I’m sure he knew better but decided to go forward despite the risks to his job, the university, his family, and, of course, his legacy.

That is not a Warde Manuel problem, and not a mental health issue, but more of an attitude problem rooted in entitlement, power and privilege. (There have been several high-profile cases of head coaches at college programs and professional teams being dismissed for engaging in similar inappropriate relationships).

What concerns me is that there could be even more collateral damage if the Moore situation at Michigan discourages presidents, athletic directors and stakeholders at these Power Four universities from hiring African Americans as head coaches of their football programs. It’s not like the industry needs more encouragement.

What I’ve found over the years is that African-American success does not necessarily inspire institutions to go out and hire more Black coaches, but African-American failures and a scandal like this encourage stakeholders to withhold the benefit of the doubt from Black candidates.

Within hours of Moore’s firing, so-called experts began offering names to replace Moore at Michigan. The list of replacements was overwhelmingly white.

The number of Black head coaches at Power Four conferences is small.

James Franklin was recently fired at Penn State, though he was quickly hired by Virginia Tech of the Atlantic Coast Conference. The ACC now has three African-American head coaches, including Tony Elliott at Virginia and Fran Brown at Syracuse. In the Big 12, Deion Sanders is at Colorado. In the Big Ten, Mike Locksley is head coach at Maryland. Currently, the SEC, perhaps America’s “Blackest” Power Four conference, has no African-American head football coaches.

In 2020, Locksley formed the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches, which includes coaches from youth football to the NFL. (I reached out to Coach Locksley for a comment on the Moore situation, but he politely declined. Moore’s last victory as the Michigan head coach came against Maryland).

Getting back to Moore, and considering this ongoing dilemma of African-American head coaches, I wondered whether Moore was aware that his actions might negatively impact the chances of aspiring young African-American coaches being hired.

I don’t know Moore, but from a couple of interviews this type of racial consciousness does not seem to be high on his list of priorities.

In January 2024, when Michigan was playing Alabama ahead of the college football playoff semifinal game, Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe told reporters during a news conference that his offensive coordinator, Bill O’Brien, told him he “shouldn’t play quarterback.” A reporter asked Moore how he “dealt with stereotypes of Black people in football on the limitations that are forced upon you. Moore said, “Yeah, really I don’t see color. My wife is Caucasian. My kids are mixed. I deal with Black, white.”

Moore added: “It’s not about color. It’s not about that, and we’re just trying to find the best players that play and know that that’s out there, but not really worry about that.”

The same year, my colleague Jesse Washington went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to write a profile on Moore. After a game, he asked Moore how he would feel about becoming the first Black head coach to win a national championship.

“We got to win next week first,” Moore said. “I don’t think about myself, I just think about these guys. 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.”

I’m not suggesting that Moore’s current difficulties came about because he is African American, but I am suggesting that when you have no sense of history — or color — in a nation that is acutely aware of color, reckless behavior can have unintended consequences.

In any event, as we continue to pick through the wreckage of a young coach’s career, the facts remain elusive, but one conclusion is clear: There are no winners in this sad story. There are only losers.

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