Joel Klatt breaks down why Sherrone Moore is the right choice to replace Jim Harbaugh
Sherrone Moore is the clear-cut option for many when it comes to the successor for Jim Harbaugh at Michigan. Joel Klatt couldn’t agree more with that as he would be fully on board with that choice and thinks the Wolverines should do it as soon as possible.
Klatt made his case for Moore during an episode of his show on Thursday following Harbaugh’s decision to leave for the Los Angeles Chargers. He started with the obvious fact that Moore already got to prove himself, and did so with flying colors, in four games as the team’s interim this past season.
“First and foremost? I want to be crystal clear about this – Michigan should hire Sherrone Moore. Period,” said Klatt.
“He already had a job interview. Those last three games were a job interview,” Klatt said. “He was the interim coach one time during the three-game suspension to begin the year. It doesn’t really count. Those are teams that they’re going to beat anyways. He is the interim head coach as they go right down the gauntlet. At Penn State, at Maryland, and home against Ohio State. Like, are you kidding me? The guy is 1-0 against Ohio State! This is post-sign stealing and cheating.”
From there, Klatt turned his attention to the stability of the program. In his opinion, hiring Moore would keep the building intact and lead to buy in from the players and fanbase. That’s one of the most vital aspects in a coaching transition considering, as Klatt pointed out, what we’ve already seen this offseason.
“Sherrone is the guy. The quicker that you can have a head coach in there? In particular a guy that all the kids in the locker room love? Then you can move forward without all the chaos that we’ve seen at other schools,” said Klatt. “Coaching changes are chaos. You don’t want that chaos to enter your locker room. You need to do things to build the barriers around your program and protect it from the chaos that could ensue.”
That’s when Klatt reached the state law regarding the job listing and how long it must be available. While he gets why it’s important in normal life, he sees this as a clear difference from what politicians intended it for. With that being the case, he called for Michigan to do what they could to bypass it in order to go ahead with the hire of Moore.
“That brings up their state law about the seven days. This job has to “be posted for seven days'” said Klatt. “This is obviously a law that is meant for jobs other than the head football coach at the university. This is meant for everything else so that there’s employment opportunities and people understand where those employment opportunities exist. That’s not what this is.”
“Michigan does have a chance to apply for a waiver, circumvent the seven-day law, and actually announce Sherrone Moore as their head coach in quicker fashion, which I believe that they should do,” Klatt stated. “They should be applying for this if they haven’t already. They should be trying to announce Sherrone Moore as their head coach as quickly as possible.”
Still, waiver or not, the general expectation for how this ends is that Moore will take over for Harbaugh as the Wolverines’ head coach. That’s all that Klatt is hoping for as he considers it to be as much of a layup as a hire can be.
“I mean this is the biggest no-brainer of all time,” said Klatt. “He has shown himself to be a guy that everybody on the team, certainly the offensive linemen, loves. They played hard for him.”
“This is an easy fit moving forward and they need to do it quickly,” said Klatt.