Sherrone Moore looks back on Penn State game, how Jim Harbaugh reacted to suspension

Sherrone Moore is getting ready for his first season as the head coach at Michigan in 2024. However, he did get experience as the interim head coach filling in for Jim Harbaugh at the end of the 2023 regular season, starting with the Penn State game.

During an appearance on The Rich Eisen Show, Moore looked back on that Penn State game, how the team learned about the suspension, and how Jim Harbaugh reacted to the suspension.

“The flight there, we’d heard rumblings,” Sherrone Moore said. “We didn’t really know, and I’m sitting right by coach and we’re on the plane. On the plane, we’ve got Wi-Fi and are twiddling through our phones, not watching movies, and then we land. And when we land, that’s when we all see it. Coach is gonna be suspended, whatever.”

At that point, the Michigan coaches needed to figure out what to do and that’s when Jim Harbaugh decided not to fight the suspension.

“We’re sitting on the bus talking about different options and he’s like, ‘Well, should I fight it?’ And this is the best part about Coach. He’s like, ‘If I don’t fight it, they’ll stop talking about me. It’ll be all about the players. Because I don’t want to fight it and then them continue to talk about me. It’s about the players. I think we’re going to win anyway,” Moore said.

“So, I don’t want to make this about me. I should just sit out and you handle it and let it be about the players.’ I was like, ‘Coach, we need you there. We want you there.’ So, initially, he fought for it but you know, whatever happened, didn’t happen.”

Sherrone Moore also pointed out that this is when the team started saying, ‘Bet,’ a rallying cry for the team at the end of the year.

“That’s when ‘Bet’ started. We were at dinner and Kris Jenkins I think tweeted it out and then JJ [McCarthy] didn’t and the rest of them did and it was just like ‘Okay, you’re going to take our coach from us. Do you think that’s going to stop us?’ And it was a very big boulder that was on the shoulder that they thought they wanted to prove themselves right, not necessarily prove doubters wrong and the results are the results.”

At the same time, Sherrone Moore was also being hit with a major task in running the team. That wasn’t easy to do and forced him to rely on the staff.

“For me, I was extremely confident in our team and the way that they practiced and the way they prepared at that moment. Obviously, it was a surreal moment for me because we’re going back and forth whether Coach would be able to coach and he was waiting at the hotel and our AD Warde Manuel came on about 90 minutes before the game kicked off and said, ‘Hey, We gotcha. You’re going to coach the game.’ You just heavily rely on the staff. Everybody we have. We have an amazing staff. So, that was very humbling. There was not any nerves, not any anxiety, just super excited to watch the boys play.”

After the Penn State game, Sherrone Moore was visibly emotional. That’s something he doesn’t mind showing and comes from how much he cares about that team.

“A number of things. When you go through crazy times like that and uncertainty, there’s a lot of emotions, a lot of human emotions, and sometimes, I wear my heart on my sleeve and I’m not afraid of that. It was a super emotional time, an exciting time, but to watch our players go through all this craziness and people try to doubt how good they were, it was just cool to watch our players play at that high level and play angry, play fast, play physically, play for each other,” Moore said.

“When you’re part of a family, and something happens good or bad to your family, there are emotions involved and we have a true family. I think that’s where that all came from and we wanted to do it for Coach Harbaugh and prove his legacy of who he is as one of the greatest coaches to coach at Michigan.”

Sherrone Moore explains his approach to 2023 interim coaching duties

Shortly after he was promoted to head coach at Michigan, Sherrone Moore broke down his interim duties during the 2023 season and how they’ll help him now that he’s the team’s head coach.

“I wasn’t really thinking about the future. I was really thinking about what we could do to win those games,” he answered, revealing that he really didn’t even look down the road and believe that he could one day take over the program. At least not in the moment,” Moore said.

“And there wasn’t really a time that I thought I could be the head coach at Michigan. You know, I think that’s always the goal in every coach’s mind, or most coach’s minds, to be the head coach. So, there wasn’t really a moment. But I can tell you, after winning that last one, it was pretty special.”