Michigan Fires Sherrone Moore - Josh Pate's College Football Show

And Jerome Moore fired with cause by the University of Michigan. First reaction is not a surprise at all. I have said not a word about this publicly. This has been I'm not gonna say well-known but this has been pretty widely speculated behind the scenes for weeks and weeks to the point where when I was watching Michigan back half of the season, there were two purposes.

Number one, I just like watching Michigan football. The second was, I believed that Michigan was taking a wait and see approach. There was also an investigation going on behind the scenes. But I thought they were taking a wait and see approach because there's one world where the team

just doesn't perform on the field, and it absolves you of even having to fire someone with cause if you if you don't want to is the way I will put that so you remember like I'm pulling Michigan schedule up here they lost the Oklahoma game but they went and beat Nebraska on the road but then when they lost against USC clock was ticking this was already bubbling behind the scenes by then that was was October 11th. Subsequently, the Michigan State game was kind of weird looking, but

they won it. The Purdue game was close, way too close, but they won it. Northwestern, way too close, but they won it. I thought if any of those games were losses, and then they were going to go on and lose to Ohio State, that was gonna be an eight and four season. I could easily see that having been enough for them to just say,

we're firing Sharon for performance-based reasons. They ended up squeezing out some wins there. They did lose to Ohio State, but people aren't getting fired for nine and three. Sorry, that's just not happening. And so then you find out after signing day, which I

think was timed purposefully, that he is fired for cause. This is just reading their language. An inappropriate relationship with a staffer. Have every reason to believe that's accurate. This is one of those really interesting dynamics where there was a wild rumor circulating behind the scenes and it was accurate. This is what myself, several other people,

had heard a month ago. So the only question was gonna be, do they really pull the trigger on it? Just because you have cause to fire someone doesn't mean you do. So I wasn't privy to the inner workings of Michigan

and I didn't know if they were, but the word was they were going to. Let me put it this way. Agents have expected the Michigan job to be coming open for several weeks now. That's been expected behind the scenes. Therefore, just because they made the move today, and it is December 10th, does not mean anyone's being caught off guard about this on December 10th. So any names that you throw out there, any speculation, it's not coming as a surprise.

So what I don't know behind the scenes at Michigan is how far down the road have they already gotten in replacing Cherone Moore. You know, we saw instances several times this past season where head coaches were fired. James Franklin, a famous recent example. And it was obvious Penn State really didn't have their ducks in a row. They just kind of decided to swing wildly and they missed, reportedly. They ultimately landed on the guy that was the right guy for the job. But nevertheless, it took 54 days. How long does this take Michigan? Or

do they already have a pretty good wink, head nod, understanding from someone, whoever that someone may be, yeah I'm taking the job as soon as you offer it to me. And then the follow-up. Follow-up is, who is it gonna be? I absolutely think that they would call Caelan DeBoer and make him say no.

I would be just utterly fascinated by some of the other names involved here. I've seen Jed Fish's name thrown around. This is not my personal hot board. I don't know where they're going to go yet. Those are some of the early thoughts as far as the reaction to it. Now, if you zoom out a little bit further, it's a really weird spot Michigan was in because if you zoom out to 50,000 feet and you think about what Sharon Moore was for Michigan, he was always described to me as a bridge head coach.

And I always thought, eh, that's kind of disrespectful, but I get where you're going with it. What they meant around Michigan when they said a bridge head coach was, obviously you're coming out of a period where Jim Harbaugh, he moves on,

and then you've got an NCAA investigation, and you needed to have a head coach during that period. And Sharon stepped in on an interim basis and they just made him the permanent head coach. And at the time, it's really cloudy. Like remember, you're in the midst of a big scandal, big investigation, and you don't know

how it's gonna turn out. So you need someone to sort of guide you through the fog. And then the thinking at Michigan was, once we get through the fog, we'll just figure the rest of it out. If things go terrible, we're going to fall off a cliff and it won't matter who the coach is.

But if we work this out, which they ended up doing, and they came out of it and the fog lifted and it was fairly sunny, then that's not going to be our long-term answer at head coach. The way it was put to me was, if you wonder why we feel that way, consider this. Consider we snap our fingers and just pretend Sharon is on the open market today. How many places would fire their current head coach to hire him? And I sat there and I knew the point they were making and I couldn't push back on it.

And so now there was this scandal thrown into the equation more recently that gives Michigan a trap door that they escape through. It's not that they couldn't technically afford to fire him, but you never want to spend money you don't have to spend. And so there's this exit door that just presents itself through a very undesirable methods, but it presents itself. Michigan ends up taking it. They get out of this thing. For anyone waiting to see if the for-cause portion

of this is challenged, no. There are a few things that Michigan may fall short on, but legally having their affairs in order before they put out a press release or a statement like that is not one of them. So they know exactly what they're doing.

And look, I don't think you'll see Sharon for a little while. I don't know Sharon more personally, but you know certainly not a perfect person. None of us are. His indiscretions because he is a public figure are going to be way more pronounced and way more out there in the

public arena than the rest of ours. But I always look at this and I know everyone else is going to make fun of it. And part of rivalries in college football is you delight in the misery of your rival. I get all that.

Michigan's not my rival. I just look at it and say, man, that's a shame. So that's what I think about Shurum. I don't know him personally, like I said, but I just, I don't know I hope one day down the road he's able to be in a position where he can be an example to someone else who is thinking about maybe

making some of the mistakes that he has made and prevents that from happening. Because at this point moving forward that's the best thing that could happen for him and that's not even to speak about his personal life or anything like that. I'm just talking strictly about football because that's how I know Sharon Moore through football. This is an elite job. The Michigan job is an elite job. It attracts a lot of attention. Now I think that about the Michigan job. I think enough candidates think that about the

Michigan job. We're about to find out. But like I said, and I can't make this clear enough, agents far and wide have expected the Michigan job to come open for weeks. The only question was timing and whether Michigan would truly pull the trigger, which they of course have today. So everyone's already got their list of candidates. Everyone's sort of probably gauged the interest of their candidate list. So I don't know how long this will take. The only thing

that could maybe prolong it is, are you going after a guy that is in the playoff and does he keep winning? That's the first thing. The second thing could be that the Michigan job is not quite as desirable as someone like me thinks it is and someone gets way down the road on considering taking it but then they just say at the last minute, nope I'm gonna stay here. And that could be anyone but that's what could prolong this search. So the Michigan job is open. It's a little

bit later in the cycle. I personally am very on board with how they timed it. I thought it was very smart to get past signing day. Now that doesn't mean your kids still may not bail on you, but you get past signing day and you assess the situation. You know who's in the playoff and who's not. It doesn't hurt to wait a little while because they could have done it like the day after the Ohio State game, but doing it now gets you past signing

day. No one really knows how to operate in this world because it's a whole new world like it's a brand new world in terms of the calendar being the way it is. But the Michigan job being open is a massive deal. This is a bombshell college Michigan job being open is a massive deal. This is a bombshell college football story and we've only just begun to talk about it.