Sherrone Banfield Moore was not qualified to be the head football coach of Michigan. He just wasn’t.
But nobody said that at the time, or wrote it in print. (even if they thought it) when he was first named “head coach” on January 26, 2024.
Not then. Maybe now.
Former Ann Arbor News sports reporter Jason Whitlock said it on YouTube this week. A “Jim Harbaugh DEI hire.”
Sherrone (his friends call him “Sherrone) was first hired by Michigan’s Harbaugh (currently with the Los Angeles Chargers) to be “tight end coach” in January of 2018.
It is very unlikely at that time that Sherrone was thinking to himself: “Just keep your cool. Play your cards straight. Be polite. Don’t talk out of turn. And in six years you’ll be the head football coach of Michigan!”
Connor Stalions might have been thinking that, after all, he preceded Sherrone to the team as an unpaid assistant in 2015 — three years before Sherrone got there.
So Connor Stalions was thinking: “Just keep your camera phone steady. Keep your ducks in a row. Be polite. Don’t speak out of turn. And nine years from now, you’ll be the head football coach of Michigan!”
Connor Stalions was thinking that, but not Sherrone Moore.
Why is that? Because not many major college football head coaches start out as “tight end coach.”
Not many do. But some do. You know who did?
Curt Cignetti.
That’s “College Football Playoffs (CFP) Number One seed Indiana Hoosiers’ head football coach Curt Cignetti” to you.
Cignetti began as a graduate assistant for the University of Pittsburgh in 1983 when he helped “Roc the Panther” for the team as a player in the Fiesta Bowl and later that year as an assistant. He was a grad assistant for the University of Pittsburgh through 1984.
In 1985, Cignetti coached the “quarterbacks and wide receivers” at Davidson College in North Carolina.
On February 3, 1986, Sherrone Banfield Moore was born in Derby, Kansas.
In 1986, Cignetti was the quarterbacks coach at Rice University in Houston, Texas.
In 1993, University of Pittsburgh head football coach Johnny Majors asked Cignetti to be his “quarterbacks and tight end” coach. He gladly accepted. When he did, He never dreamed that he would be hired as the head football coach for the Indiana Hoosiers on November 30, 2023.
But Curt Cignetti was known for making bold statements. One of them was: “I win. Google me.” Sherrone Moore wasn’t known for making bold statements. But he often told anyone who would listen that he liked “OF.”
Everyone thought he meant “offense.”
So after three seasons as the “tight ends” coach, on January 25, 2021 Harbaugh named Moore as his offensive line coach and co-offensive coordinator.
Less than two months after Cignetti was hired at Indiana, Sherrone was hired by Harbaugh and Athletic Director Warde Manuel to be the new head football coach of the Michigan Wolverines.
Always winning, Cignetti became the head football coach of Indiana University of Pennsylvania from 2011 to 2016. He was the head coach of Elon University from 2017 to 2018. He was the head coach of James Madison University from 2019 to 2023.
In January 2023, Moore helped Harbaugh win a national championship as the Wolverines’ offensive coordinator. Sherrone shared OC duties with Matt Weiss in 2022.
Weiss is currently facing 24 federal charges (14 counts of unauthorized computer access, 10 counts of aggravated identity theft) for allegedly hacking thousands of college athletes’ accounts.
Moore did not exceed to the level of a Matt Weiss.
He currently only has three charges against him.
Sherrone is currently facing felony third-degree home invasion and misdemeanor stalking and breaking and entering charges, stemming from an alleged incident Wednesday involving a female Michigan football staffer.
Court TV interviewed former Los Angeles public defender Philip Dube prior to Sherrone’s arraignment hearing in Washtenaw County yesterday, who said it was unlikely that Moore would face jail time, because he did not injure anyone and only threatened to injure himself, which is not a crime in Michigan.
But other legal experts said that Sherrone faces a long period of “rehabilitation” after he puts his legal troubles behind him — and is unlikely to become a head football coach ever again — at any level.
When Moore was first hired as Michigan’s head football coach, Colin Cowherd said that he was not likely to succeed because “proximity to genius does not equal genius.”
Cowherd warned that giving the job to an assistant who worked closely with a “legend” (like Harbaugh) often only works for about a year and a half before “cracks“ start to show, citing numerous examples from other major college programs and the NFL. He said, “proximity to genius and proximity to greatness does not equal genius or greatness.”
Meanwhile, Curt Cignetti is preparing his Indiana Hoosiers to win their first-ever college football national championship.
And Sherrone Banfield Moore has hired Joseph Simon as his legal representative in a Washtenaw County courtroom in Michigan.
And former Michigan “analyst” Connor Stalions was serving as a defensive coordinator and interim head coach at Detroit Mumford High School, and later as an offensive coordinator at Belleville High School, working with top recruits like Michigan’s Bryce Underwood.
As Stalions said in his Netflix documentary, he still thinks he will be the head football coach of Michigan one fine day. He’s just on a different timeline than Sherrone’s six-year ascent to greatness.
Michigan legend Jim Harbaugh was asked yesterday what he made of the news about Sherrone Moore:
“Still processing that. Heard that. Chad Jessop told me, one of our equipment guys, when we were coming off the field on Thursday. Still processing that like a lot of people, I’m sure.”
Yes, Harbaugh’s “still processing it.”
Aren’t we all?
