Coach's Q&A: Jerry Moore

Appalachian St. head coach talks small school success and his future

Aug. 8, 2007

By Steve Brauntuch

Special to CSTV.com


	Steve Brauntuch Steve Brauntuch is a researcher for CSTV and contributor to CSTV.com. E-mail here!

He is one of the most successful coaches in the history of college football, but the average college football fan has never heard of him. Jerry Moore has built a dynasty on the gridiron at Appalachian State, where the Mountaineers are coming off their second straight national title. Moore was an assistant at the BCS level for a long time and even took the reins at Texas Tech for a few years in the early 1980s. But he has found his calling in FCS football, where he is 154-68 entering his 19th season on the sidelines in Boone, North Carolina.

What's more impressive is that Moore's squads did it the hard way - they survived an actual playoff bracket. And all things considered, Moore says he prefers the playoff system to the old bowl format. Moore spoke about building a program on a smaller scale, his future in coaching and his team's date with Michigan on September 1.

SB: You have built an incredibly successful program at Appalachian State. What do you think has been the biggest key to your success there?

JM: It's really two things. We've got good players. You've got to start with that. Our kids have a great work ethic. And we've been able to maintain and keep our staff intact. We've not lost very many coaches in the 19 years that I've been here. We've had guys leave and return and come back. And I think the continuity of our coaching staff and the work ethic of our players... and then of late, the enthusiasm of the whole Appalachian nation. We don't have a 100,000-seat stadium, but it sounds like it is on Saturday afternoons.

SB: How do you sell players on coming to Appalachian State and winning on the Championship Subdivision level rather than playing at a BCS conference school?

JM: Well, we don't get real caught up with hype and stuff like that. We're a little bit unusual. We don't offer many kids until after their senior year. A lot of the bigger schools, you know, their recruiting is actually done before the season ever gets started. And we just go kind of pick kids that we see that we think will fit our program... number one, that they can run. We look for speed and we look for aggressiveness. We don't get all caught up that they're not 6-6 and all that stuff. Our center [Scott Suttle] is probably 5-10, and he couldn't play in Division I at Georgia or some place like that, but he's a terrific football player for us. He played excellent against LSU and he's a good example of the kind of kids we have here.

SB: You've coached at both levels of Division I football. What do you think are the biggest differences between the two levels?

JM: Well, it's all a little bit relative. I-A is, there's no question... the majestic part of coaching. I've been at two programs that were really top notch - Nebraska and Arkansas. And then I came here, and you know, when the ball is teed up on Saturday afternoon, it's not any different. It's the things that kind of surround you - the atmosphere, the locker rooms, the facilities and things like that. Although in 18 months, we'll probably be just about as good as most of those people. We're spending close to $40 million on a 300,000 square foot facility here. But they have 85 scholarships. We have 63. Well, the majority of people we play have 63, and the majority of people they play have 85. So it all kind of evens out. It's a little bit tough - just like this year, we open up against Michigan. I think we'll play hard and we'll play well, but nevertheless, there's 22 scholarships there that are unaccounted for. And the depth gets to be a little bit of a factor. But all in all, when we're in our league, it's a lot of fun. It's a great atmosphere.

SB: Do you purposely go out and schedule a team like Michigan every year to give your guys a taste of playing at that higher level? Do you think it's a good experience for them?

JM: I think you hit the nail on the head. Everybody else calls them money games. I call them opportunity games. We've played LSU. We've played Kansas. We played N.C. State last year. We've played Auburn. We've played Clemson. We played a series with Wake Forest. And it's exactly what you just made it out to be. It's a great opportunity for us to go try to match up with these guys, and it gives us some kind of accountability of where we are. And we've not beaten many of these other Division I schools, but we've played well. We've played extremely well, and I think that helps get us ready for league play.

SB: Earlier in your career, you coached under Hayden Fry and Tom Osborne, two college football coaching legends. What did you learn working for them that has helped you along the way?

JM: Well, Hayden was a real innovator. I've said in the last 20 years, he was way ahead of his time. He was doing things that a lot of us are doing today - particularly, what we're doing today, he was doing back when I was coaching with him at SMU in the 1960s. When I got to Nebraska, Tom was so thorough. He dotted all the i's, crossed all the t's, and the thing that has helped me in my coaching and has helped me personally is his level-headedness about everything. Tom never varied. He was a very confident coach, a very poised coach, and he was not a hot-and-cold, up-and-down kind of guy. And I think that helped to see a guy and be around a guy like that for six or seven years.

SB: Your division has a playoff system that works well. Why do you think it is that the Bowl Subdivision hasn't adopted a similar playoff system yet?

JM: I'm speculating, but I think a lot of it has to do with the bowl games. There's a lot of traditional bowl games that might get left out that at one point in time were "the" bowl games. I think there's a huge, for lack of a better word, obligation from Division I football not to exclude these bowls in a playoff scenario. And if you're sitting and looking at it like I would look at it, you'd think they could include some of those bowls as a playoff game like we do and maybe even have some byes or whatever they want to call it like they do in basketball, or even a play-in game. But I know this - I had no experience in I-AA football until I got here, but the playoffs, in the last two years, we've been to eight bowl games. That's what it amounts to, because a lot of times, I know the first year we came here, Texas Tech went to Mobile to a bowl game. They went down Thursday and came back on Saturday or Sunday after the game. That same weekend, we played Middle Tennessee State, and we left here on Wednesday, and we came back after the game on Saturday night in the playoffs. And we've been to Utah, to New Hampshire... just great trips for us as far as playoffs are concerned. And I think our players, I know they enjoy it. We've got a lot of kids that wouldn't have seen these things otherwise.

SB: What do you think has been the biggest change in college football since the time you played in the late 1950s at Baylor?

JM: I think the TV things have just gotten better and better - the instant replays and stuff like that. And kids now have a chance to study things. When I played, there was one side shot. That was all, and back then also, you were fortunate if you were on TV one time in a year. There were no replays or anything like that. But I've got a grandson who's a pretty good little football player, and he's watched all these instant replays and all this stuff and hangs out up here. And you've got so many camps now - kids go to football camps. And being able to be more specialized at a position just helps you get better and better.

SB: You must have received dozens of offers in your time at Appalachian State to leave for a Bowl Subdivision program. Have you been tempted to leave and go try your hand again at a BCS program?

JM: I've been tempted, and then it gets back to two things that we talked about right in the beginning - our players and our staff. And obviously, you could probably take 90 percent of your staff with you, maybe all of them. But you sure couldn't take the players with you, and I really genuinely care about our players. I could be having a really bad day, and I could get around those guys at practice and it's just a shot in the arm. And it's the same thing with our staff... they just have fun doing stuff together and they just have a lot of respect for each other.

SB: How many more years do you see yourself coaching in college football? Have you put a timeline on it yet?

JM: I really haven't. I've said this to our staff and I've said it to the administration here, and they've been great. They've been awesome. I don't want to hold our program back. This is going to sound tacky, but I'm going to say it. I was in the office at 4:45 this morning, and I'm tired right now. But the day that I don't have that zeal, that I don't have that energy level to do those kinds of things - now, I don't come to the office that way every morning. But I'm just saying I don't want to hold this program back. I've got no agenda. I've got no timeline. I enjoy coaching, and the day that it's not fun, then I'm going to be holding this program back. And the other part is that it's not just me. I've got a relatively young staff. I mean, they're in their thirties and forties. Two or three of them played here. So we know a lot about each other, and we kind of know how everybody is thinking. And when a guy is wounded and hurt, we're all hurt. And when we're all celebrating, we're all celebrating. So that's been the thing for me - it's just been an awful lot of fun to coach, and I wouldn't want to just struggle through some seasons and just pull a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak.

SB: Have you ever hiked the Appalachian Trail?

JM: I have thought about it. My video guy has done that, and his brother has done it. And I've got the book on it. I have not done it, but I have wanted to, and that might be the final thing for me, when coaching is over, to go hike the Appalachian Trail. A lot of people probably don't even know about it, but it is a challenge.

SB: Boone, North Carolina - the home of Appalachian State - was named one of the top four North American adventure destinations in 2005 by a group of travel journalists. Can you name the other three?

JM: I can't, although that's probably the reason I've stayed here.

SB: They are Durango, Colorado; Bend, Oregon; and North Vancouver, Canada. Have you ever been to any of them?

JM: I've been to Durango. When I was at Texas Tech, we used to go up there and ski in the winters. But I want to tell you - if you ask the people around here, we're number one. It's a great place. People call me and want to come over here in the middle of August, stay for four or five days, just sightsee and all of that stuff. It's a great place.