The college football origin stories of Sherrone Moore, backup Oklahoma guard
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Jake Trotter, ESPN Senior Writer
A common refrain heard around the Oklahoma locker room and team hotel on evenings before game days: “Ask Sherrone.”
Long before succeeding Jim Harbaugh to become Michigan‘s head coach, Sherrone Moore was a backup guard for the Sooners. He never started a game, but Moore proved to be a beloved, sought out and, ultimately, valued member of Oklahoma’s 2006 and 2007 Big 12 championship teams. Even then, those Sooners say now they saw a future head coach.
“He was incredibly bright, a great communicator … a team guy, and that matters,” recalled Bob Stoops, Oklahoma’s head coach at the time. “Everything about him was fantastic.”
Moore, 38, is less than two weeks away from his debut as Michigan’s permanent head coach. He faces the enormous task of replacing Harbaugh, as well as 13 key players from last year’s national championship team selected in the NFL draft; no program lost more draft picks this year.
Moore is also under scrutiny after the NCAA implicated him in the sign-stealing operation allegedly orchestrated by former Michigan staff member Connor Stalions. According to a draft of the NCAA’s notice of allegations to Michigan that ESPN obtained, Moore could face a suspension and other penalties for allegedly deleting a thread of 52 text messages with Stalions in October 2023. According to the draft, Moore’s texts later were recovered and he turned them over to NCAA enforcement staff. Moore said last week that the school is fully cooperating with the NCAA infractions process; of the Stalions text thread, he added: “I look forward to them being released.”
Moore, however, showed last season as offensive coordinator and later, interim head coach, that he could weather a storm and lead the Wolverines to success with a cloud hanging over the program. While Harbaugh served suspensions, Moore went 4-0, with wins over Penn State and Ohio State, as Michigan finished undefeated on its way to the national title.
During that stretch, Moore’s former teammates said they saw the same passion they remembered from his time at Oklahoma.
“When they won that [Penn State] game and he cried in the interview and people was giving him a hard time, I was like, ‘That’s because y’all don’t know the type of person he is, the type of love he has for his teammates, the school he’s at, the kids he’s coaching,'” said former Oklahoma All-American defensive tackle Gerald McCoy, who was a six-time Pro Bowler with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “He’s very loyal. And he’s going to be the biggest cheerleader.”
During his two years in Norman, Moore was Oklahoma’s biggest cheerleader from the sidelines. Moore grew up just outside of Wichita in Derby, Kansas. After a stint at Butler (Kansas) Community College, he joined the Sooners as part of a star-laden signing class that included McCoy, San Francisco 49ers All-Pro left tackle Trent Williams, former Dallas Cowboys Pro Bowl running back DeMarco Murray and 2008 Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Sam Bradford.
Tulsa head coach Kevin Wilson, who was then Oklahoma’s offensive coordinator, recruited Moore out of junior college to replenish the Sooners’ depth up front not long after Moore’s father was sent to Iraq to work as a field manager for an oil company. Immediately, Wilson was impressed.
“A rock-solid guy,” Wilson said. “I truly didn’t think when he was young, ‘OK, this kid’s coaching.’ But you go back and [think about] how great a teammate he was, watch the multiple positions he played and adapted easily, he showed a lot of those coaching traits as a young kid.”
On a loaded Oklahoma offensive line that paved the way for an offense that broke several FBS records, Moore wound up backing up two-time All-American left guard Duke Robinson.
Moore rarely played. But, as Stoops noted, Moore was always ready to go.
“A lot of people don’t handle that situation the best,” Stoops said. “And he did. He always had a great attitude. That’s what I mean by being a great team guy.”
Moore didn’t get many opportunities to help the Sooners on Saturdays. Instead, he focused on trying to help those that did reach their potential. Robinson especially relied on Moore for advice in practice, solidarity in summer workouts and, along with the rest of Oklahoma’s players, encouragement in games.
“He definitely could’ve played elsewhere. It just so happened that we had an elite offensive line,” Robinson said. “But he came in a dog, and fit right in. He was so smart, he helped me and other guys when it came to understanding certain plays and why the play went this way and why certain calls were made. He saw things that we didn’t see. And he helped us out when we made a mistake or missed an assignment.”
McCoy and the Oklahoma defenders would often grow frustrated during preseason practices because Moore would know what the defense would be doing leading into every snap.
“You try to move all over the place to try and not give away what’s happening,” McCoy said. “But he’s calling out all the blitzes. He knew whether we were running a stunt game, he knew all our calls, all our checks, he knew everything. He knew everybody’s job. He could play any position. … Some teammates are just far advanced when it comes to knowing the game of football and Sherrone was always that guy.”
Despite his football acumen, Moore wasn’t Oklahoma’s most athletic offensive lineman. During summer workouts, strength and conditioning coach Jerry Schmidt had players do an hour on a StairMaster for every second they missed off their goal time in shuttle runs. They would also have to run the shuttles again.
“Usually me and Sherrone [would] be the last ones, and we’d have the entire team rooting for us to finish,” Robinson said. “We’d be literally just falling over each other, stumbling. We really needed each other, like, ‘Damn bro, we better make this time because I ain’t doing this s— over again, I’m not getting on that StairMaster, either. None of that, bro.'”
Moore didn’t always make his time. But unlike other exhausted teammates, Moore never stopped running, even if he knew he wouldn’t make it in time.
“There were much better athletes in much better shape than Sherrone was, but Sherrone wouldn’t give up,” recalled former Sooners All-Big 12 center Jon Cooper, now Mississippi State’s tight ends coach. “He might be a couple seconds late. But he would go on and finish late rather than quit.”
Trent Ratterree, an instate walk-on tight end, remembered Moore taking him under his wing going into Ratterree’s freshman year. The two had a mutual friend in Wade Weibert, who played with Moore at Butler before going to Kansas State. Weibert had asked Moore to look out for Ratterree and he did just that, becoming a “big brother type” to him.
“When I got to OU the workouts were shocking,” Ratterree said. “I would throw up because I was so anxious. Sherrone picked up on that and coached me through it. … I always looked up to him because I thought he was an extremely nice person. He would lift people up. It was just good to have him around for morale purposes.”
That was especially true in tough and key moments during games. Moore developed a reputation for being first on the field between possessions, slapping teammates on the shoulder pads while offering advice and lifting spirits.
“He was always Mr. Positive,” Cooper said. “He was always about the guys, always talking to us, always trying to spread positivity.”
Cooper recalled during the 2007 Big 12 championship game when Moore’s positivity helped Oklahoma overcome a slow start offensively. The Sooners trailed No. 1 Missouri 3-0 after the first quarter. At halftime, the game was tied.
“We’d be coming off [the field], and he’d be out at the numbers every time like, ‘Hey, y’all got this,'” Cooper said. “You could see that look in his eye and it was contagious. He was like, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing — it’s about to break.'”
As Michigan’s co-offensive coordinator in 2021, Moore had another similar moment. After a grinding first half against Washington, Moore repeatedly uttered, “Smash,” along the sidelines. The Wolverines embodied that mentality and steamrolled the Huskies in the second half, rushing for 343 yards (#smash is now on Moore’s X bio).
In that Big 12 title game 14 years earlier, Moore kept reminding the Oklahoma offense that it was “about to break.” Then, it did. The Sooners scored three straight touchdowns in the second half en route to their second straight Big 12 championship.
Following the Big 12 title victory the year before over Nebraska, Moore was up front dancing to wide receiver Malcolm Kelly’s famed victory rap.
After the Missouri win, Moore was the first one dancing again.
“He was very high hipped with skinny legs and — I don’t know how to explain this dance — but he had this dance anytime we won a big game,” Cooper said. “And everybody would be cheering him on because he was that kind of guy on the sidelines.”
Moore’s infectious personality and relentless positivity carried over off the field, too. In a locker room that could be cliquey by position, Moore was friendly with almost everyone, from the freshman walk-on tight end to the punter. Teammates called him “the connector” who players could confide in if they were struggling with a problem. As a result, Moore’s house became the unofficial hangout off campus for the entire team, whether he or roommate D.J. Wolfe, an Oklahoma defensive back, were there or not.
“If there was a group of people laughing, you could bet your money Sherrone was somewhere nearby,” McCoy said. “That’s the type of person he is, he brought so much joy and love. … As soon as practice was over, you want to talk about the life of the party.”
Yet when it came to football, Moore was all business. Before every pregame walkthrough, each player had to turn in a written test on that week’s game plan. Inevitably, several players would wait last minute to fill them out.
“They’d be in the locker room hurrying, trying to rush, pages would be all ripped up, just looking a mess,” McCoy said. “And if they didn’t know the answer, it was always, ‘Ask Sherrone.’ Everybody would go to Sherrone. Because he’s going to know.”
After Moore graduated from Oklahoma, Stoops said he wanted to hire him. But he didn’t have a vacant spot on his staff. Instead, Moore went to Louisville, where he began his rapid ascension up the coaching ranks — all the way to Michigan.
“When you take a person that intelligent about the game of football, with that type of passion, it’s hard to keep him from becoming a head coach,” McCoy said. “Sherrone’s a natural born leader.
“He was born to be a coach.”
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Adam Rittenberg
Michigan’s investigation into its football program and wider athletic department could lead to findings of additional misconduct that might trigger more employment terminations, interim university president Domenico Grasso said Wednesday.
In a video statement, Grasso described the week since football coach Sherrone Moore’s firing as “no doubt a challenging time for our university community.”
Michigan fired Moore on Dec. 10 for engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member, discovered through a university investigation. Moore faces three criminal charges, including felony third-degree home invasion, for allegedly confronting the staff member at her residence after being fired.
Michigan’s investigation into Moore’s conduct and the football program continues, and the university commissioned Chicago-based law firm Jenner & Block to conduct a larger review of the athletic department culture, conduct and procedures following a series of scandals.
“We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that conduct like this does not happen again,” said Grasso, who took over as interim president in May and will step down when a permanent president is installed. “Make no mistake. We will leave no stone unturned, and any further action we take will be based on credible evidence and findings, developed through a rigorous investigation.
“If the university learns of information through this investigation or otherwise that warrants a termination of any employee, we will act swiftly, just as we did in the case of Coach Moore.”
Grasso encouraged those who have information regarding misconduct within the football program or athletic department to contact Jenner & Block.
“Our focus is strictly on uncovering the facts,” Grasso said. “It is my job, my duty, to ensure the integrity of this investigation.”
Grasso also briefly addressed Michigan’s search for its next football coach. Athletic director Warde Manuel, who has led the department since 2016, has not publicly addressed the search, which he is expected to lead.
Biff Poggi, a Michigan staff member under both Moore and predecessor Jim Harbaugh, is serving as interim head coach for Michigan’s upcoming Cheez-It Citrus Bowl matchup against Texas on Dec. 31.
“We will hire an individual who is of the highest moral character and who will serve as a role model and a respected leader for the entire football program,” Grasso said. “And who will, with dignity and integrity, be a fierce competitor.”
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Greg Wyshynski
Boston Bruins forward Morgan Geekie can finish a Rubik’s Cube in under a minute.
“I mean, right now I’d be pretty rusty,” he said. “I’m not insane, like those kids that you see on TV, but I’m pretty good at them.”
When Geekie was around 10 years old, a cousin taught him how to speed solve the puzzle. While some have never found a way to line up that mosaic of colors despite years of trying, Geekie said it’s doable once one cracks the code. One summer at their lake cottage, his cousin wrote down its patterns. Geekie spent two weeks memorizing them and working out solutions while fiddling with the cube.
“It’s basically just all algorithms. You just do the same moves all the time once you get the pieces in the right spot. Once you do that, I mean, it’s pretty cut and dry. Everything goes in order,” he said. “I haven’t really forgot. It’s just one of those things that once you know it, you know it.”
Perhaps Geekie just knows how to score goals now, too.
That’s the simplest rationalization for the 27-year-old’s unexpected transformation into one of the NHL’s premier goal scorers. Through 34 games, Geekie is second in the NHL with 24 goals, trailing only the dominant Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche (28). Going back to the start of last season, Geekie is tied for 11th in goals scored (57).
Geekie scored 33 goals in 2024-25, which is 16 more than his previous career high set two years ago with the Bruins. He shot 22%, which obliterated his previous career best of 13.1% set in 2023-24.
There’s always an offensive player whose unexpected scoring surge in one season makes him the consensus choice for regression the following season. Entering this season, that player was Geekie.
He was the first player listed on ESPN’s rundown of regression candidates, with the expectation that he would top out at 26 goals. Sports Illustrated did the same thing, writing that his “offensive numbers are set to dip next season.” Daily Faceoff wrote that Geekie’s shooting percentage was “a strong indication that his performance isn’t sustainable, at least at this level” for the Bruins.
Geekie gets it. He called the predictions “a fair statement” given that he was scoring less than 10 goals in a season with the Seattle Kraken just a few seasons ago.
“I see it all. It’s an easy cherry to pick to be like, ‘Obviously he’s shooting 22%, it’s going to go down.’ It didn’t bother me at all,” Geekie said.
Rather than regress, Geekie has progressed this season. Through 34 games, he is shooting 28.2%.
“I mean, it’s got to go down at some point,” he said, with a laugh. “Like I said, I don’t really pay attention to that and I’m not somebody that has 10 shots a game, so I just try to make the most of my opportunities when I get the puck.”
GEEKIE IS AMUSED by the focus on his shooting percentage, because he feels there are easy explanations for it. The first is that he doesn’t believe he shoots the puck all that much. Over the past two seasons, David Pastrnak averaged 3.79 shots per game in 110 games. Geekie averaged 2.11 in that same span. Only Sidney Crosby (2.45 shots per game) has a lower average than Geekie (2.48) among the top 10 goal-scorers this season.
“I feel like I’m a big quality over quantity person,” he said.
His first season in Boston, coach Jim Montgomery stressed the need for Geekie to get chances from deep inside the attacking zone.
“I think a high-danger chance is better than just shooting it from the wall. That’s kind of the mentality that I’ve had always. I’m not trying to waste shots that aren’t good for anybody,” Geekie said. “Unless I’m trying to create something off it, I’m honestly not trying to put it on net. Maybe that’s why I end up where I end up.”
Pastrnak recently said the Bruins were reminding Geekie to shoot the puck more often. In fairness, Geekie is shooting more this season. Pastrnak said Geekie is “definitely trying to be a little more selfish to take them” when he fights into high-danger areas of the ice. But Geekie acknowledged there are sometimes philosophical differences between his striving for quality over his team’s desire for quantity.
“I think it’s a push and pull,” he said. “It’s like, I don’t think I need to be shooting this, but other people think that it still gives us an opportunity to create a chance. So I just try to keep that in mind when I have the puck”
This is Geekie’s seventh season in the NHL. He was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes with the 67th pick in the 2017 draft as a goal-scoring forward with the WHL Tri-City Americans. His first two seasons as a pro were mostly spent in the AHL with the Charlotte Checkers, before playing 36 games with the Hurricanes in 2020-21.
That summer, the Seattle Kraken held their expansion draft as the NHL’s newest team. Geekie was left off Carolina’s protected list. At the time, it wasn’t expected that former Hurricanes GM Ron Francis would select him for the Kraken, with options like defenseman Jake Bean and forward Nino Niederreiter available from Carolina. But Geekie was the choice, a player whom Francis had drafted while with the Canes.
Geekie had 22 points in 73 games in his first season in Seattle, skating 12:36 per game with just seven goals. His second campaign saw him jump to 28 points in 69 games, but with even less ice time (10:27).
He was a restricted free agent after the 2022-23 season. Francis attempted to re-sign him before the deadline for submitting qualifying offers, but Geekie and his representatives declined it. The two sides couldn’t find common ground. Rather than go to arbitration, where the Kraken weren’t keen on Geekie potentially setting the terms of his next deal, they chose not to qualify him, making him an unrestricted free agent.
“With Morgan, we did make what I felt was a pretty fair offer,” Francis said at the time, via Sound of Hockey. “It didn’t work out, and he has the right once we don’t qualify him to go elsewhere.”
And so he went to Boston, signing a two-year deal worth $4 million in total.
While he wasn’t seeing much time with the Kraken, Geekie felt he was improving as a player. He said a “integral part” of that development was thanks to Jonathan Sigalet, a skills coach who improved all facets of his game.
“When I first started working with him, he was adamant that he wasn’t going to try and make me play like I’m on the first line,” Geekie recalled. “He said, ‘We both know that trying to do things that you do on the first line on the fourth line is going to get you in the press box.'”
He said working with Siglet slowed the game down for him. He started to see the game differently. He began to see “little tendencies” that all of the NHL’s good players share. Geekie also appreciated having a “third party” assessment for his play, apart from that of his coaches and his own.
Geekie was immediately given an opportunity to thrive in Boston in 2023-24, playing 15:21 in his first game with the Bruins. He ended up averaging 15:25 per game, with 17 goals and 22 assists in 76 games. He earned time with Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha on the Bruins’ top line.
His follow-up season didn’t start well. Geekie scored one goal in his first 17 games and was a healthy scratch early in the season. Some trade whispers started about him as a pending restricted free agent. He had eight goals by the end of the 2024 calendar year.
How did he end up with 33 of them? With one of the greatest goal-scoring heaters this side of Alex Ovechkin: Geekie scored 14 goals in his last 20 games of the season. His chemistry with Pastrnak was undeniable — the Bruins scoring ace assisted on 21 of Geekie’s 33 goals last season.
Geekie expressed a desire to stay with the Bruins. The feeling was mutual, as GM Don Sweeney in June handed him a six-year, $33 million contract for a team-friendly $5.5 million annual cap hit.
WHEN GEEKIE SIGNED his new contract, he decided he wanted to join in the tradition of NHL players celebrating a windfall with their teammates. It’s usually a dinner or something of that nature.
But Geekie wanted to do something different.
“Everybody’s eating at the same restaurants in every city. And I’m sure they’d remember it for a little while, but I think it would be just one of those things like, ‘Hey, thanks for dinner.’ So I wanted to do something a little more nostalgic,” he said.
Geekie is a huge baseball fan who played competitively until his late teens. He was in the process of designing a personalized baseball glove for himself through a company called 44 Pro Custom Gloves when his wife, Emma, suggested that he design ones for all of his teammates as a gift.
Geekie started the process in July, sketching out what he wanted on the gloves for 30 teammates — including players that were on the bubble for the Bruins’ roster this season. He had the biographical information for them, from their birth cities and countries to their schools to where they played junior hockey.
“Honestly, for probably three weeks, I just sat in front of my TV watching baseball and I would just draft gloves up. I thought it was so fun,” Geekie said. “My wife got sick of me for a little while.”
He would FaceTime his brother Noah, a coach at Okotoks Dawgs Academy in Alberta, to bounce the designs off him and get input. He was cognizant of having the designs as unique as possible, despite some of the school colors being similar for his teammates.
Before a practice in October, Geekie delivered the gloves to the locker room stalls of his teammates. It went over well.
“Baseball is not that big in Sweden, but it’s obviously cool to have,” center Elias Lindholm told the Bruins website, having received a glove with a Swedish flag on it. “Hopefully, when my kids get a little bit older, we can play a little game or something. For now, it is just going to be at home, resting.”
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Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
Morgan Geekie nets goal for Bruins
While the gloves were a chance to celebrate with his teammates, there weren’t many celebrations anticipated for Boston this season. The Bruins were trading players away at last season’s trade deadline, sending mainstays like captain Brad Marchand (Florida), center Charlie Coyle (Colorado) and defenseman Brandon Carlo (Toronto) elsewhere. They had an incoming first-year coach in Marco Sturm. At best, it was supposed to be a transition year for the Bruins.
But through 34 games, Boston is second in the Atlantic Division with a 20-14-0 record, within a point of division-leading Detroit in the crowded Eastern Conference.
Many around the NHL were surprised. Geekie wasn’t.
“We underperformed. Last season was like the perfect storm of bad events with our kind of discombobulated training camp and then having a coaching change and just kind of everything that could have went wrong went wrong,” Geekie said. “The core group we have is just too good to be written off. But I understand why people had doubts about us.”
But defying doubts is what Morgan Geekie’s all about, whether it’s his team’s predicted finish in the standings or his own predicted regression as a scorer.
“He has everything to score 50 in this league,” Pastrnak said. “He has a heck of a shot. He has the goal-scoring instincts. He is going to get it one day.”
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