On Wednesday morning, Sherrone Moore was preparing to coach Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.
By Wednesday night, Moore was in a Washtenaw County jail cell, having lost his job ― and potentially so much more.
Moore remained jailed Thursday as Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit’s office weighed charges. Moore is expected to appear in court and be arraigned in Ann Arbor on Friday, according to police. He was arrested Wednesday for an alleged assault, after he was informed of his firing by Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel, but before his firing had even been publicly announced.
What unfolded has made national and even global headlines ― there has been a flurry of rumors and fewer confirmed facts ― involving college football’s all-time winningest program, a program that won a national championship less than two years ago.
It’s also a program that’s now left, once again, to pick up the pieces from a salacious and self-inflicted scandal.
“You certainly can’t wear your Block M with a same amount of pride today as you could yesterday,” former Michigan star tight end Jake Butt said. “It just sucks because it still means a lot, the term ‘Michigan Man.’
“No one’s gonna want to hear it again.”
Moore, 39, was fired Wednesday afternoon for what UM officials said was evidence of an inappropriate relationship with an unidentified staff member. Michigan issued a two-paragraph press release about his firing at 4:43 p.m. Wednesday and held no news conference.
By the time that announcement was made, Moore already was in police custody for an alleged assault. Police in Pittsfield Township reported making contact with an alleged suspect at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday.
At 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Moore was booked into county jail, where he has remained ever since, ahead of an expected Friday arraignment.
UM’s image problem
There have been no details of possible charges provided by Savit’s office, nor any details of the alleged assault provided by Pittsfield Township police, which was one of at least three departments to respond to the alleged incident near the 3000 block of Ann Arbor Saline Road. Saline and UM police also were involved. A staff member in UM athletics has a listed address at an apartment complex in the vicinity of that 3000 block.
Moore was reportedly “suicidal” and wielding a knife shortly after he was fired, according to dispatch and police audio obtained by The Detroit News.
“According to our victim here, he did put a knife to his throat and ran out,” according to an officer as police searched for the coach. And later, “they’re also advising that when he left the location on their call, he walked out with several knives.”
In another clip that The News obtained via Broadcastify.com, a dispatcher said a caller told her a male was at her location in the house, and that he had been stalking her for months. Moore is not identified on the audio, but the location is in the same block where police said they arrested Moore.
The audio, parts of which were first published by TMZ and obtained from Broadcastify.com, provided a second-by-second glimpse as Washtenaw County dispatchers and law enforcement sought to find and contain Moore. The News obtained longer dispatches that provided more detail about the manhunt that led to Moore’s arrest.
The News reached out to Pittsfield Township police to verify the audio’s authenticity and didn’t receive a response Thursday. An open-records request has been filed. Prosecutors and police have said an investigation remains ongoing.
It’s unclear if Moore has obtained legal counsel. Multiple messages to his last known agent were left by The News and went unanswered Thursday.
Moore is married with three young children and resides in Ann Arbor.
“It doesn’t look good,” Michigan student William Harper, 21, a senior from Detroit, said Thursday, while walking near the Student Union.
“It’s not great for the school’s image,” said Kayden Lincoln, 24, a first-year law student from Montana.
It’s the latest scandal to rock the football program, which won its national championship under the black cloud of an elaborate sign-sealing scandal orchestrated by low-level staffer Connor Stalions that led to multiple game suspensions that season for then-head coach Jim Harbaugh, levied by the Big Ten. Harbaugh also was suspended that same season for multiple games stemming from NCAA recruiting violations that occurred during the pandemic; Moore, then the team’s offensive coordinator, also was suspended for a game that season.
Harbaugh left after the national championship to coach the NFL’s Los Angeles Chargers, leaving the sign-stealing scandal in his wake, while not cooperating with NCAA investigators.
Moore was promoted to the head-coaching job in late January 2024, and Michigan went 8-5 his first season. Michigan had a 9-3 record this season, in which Moore was suspended for two games as part of the NCAA’s final findings from the Stalions sign-stealing scandal. Moore also was to be suspended for the 2026 season opener against Western Michigan, but has been fired for cause, two years into a five-year contract that paid him more than $6 million a year.
In less than two years, Michigan has fired one head football coach and lost another, while in recent years, several football staff members have been fired ― and in multiple cases, arrested, too. Former co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss was fired in 2023 because of a federal computer hacking criminal case that alleges he infiltrated the personal accounts of thousands of college athletes and stole intimate photographs and videos from 2015-23.
In the past three-plus years, Michigan also fired its head hockey coach, Mel Pearson, over allegations he pressured ill players to play during the COVID pandemic, and fired its head men’s basketball coach, Juwan Howard, who once slapped a Wisconsin assistant coach during the postgame handshake line.
In 2022, Michigan reached a $490 million settlement with more than 1,000 former students, most of them male and many of them former athletes, who alleged they were molested by late university doctor and team physician Robert Anderson. Those allegations date to the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.
Manuel has been Michigan’s athletic director since 2016 and has not publicly commented on Moore’s firing, beyond the brief press statement released by the university late Wednesday afternoon. Michigan regents have not spoken publicly, though they did gather on a call Thursday to discuss the situation, including Manuel, according to a source with knowledge of the situation. Manuel remained athletic director on Thursday night, according to the source.
Michigan interim president Domenico Grasso sent an open letter to the university community Thursday, calling Moore’s actions that led to his firing “a breach of trust.” Grasso said he was in close touch with the regents.
“Our swift and decisive action reflects the university’s staunch commitment to a campus culture of respect, integrity and accountability,” Grasso wrote as part of his letter to UM colleagues and students. “All of the facts here must be known, so the university’s investigation will continue.
“Our community has worked diligently in recent years to strengthen a safe and respectful environment for all.
“We must remain steadfast with those efforts.”
The Michigan campus community still was making sense of the latest scandal Thursday.
Moore’s firing marked the shortest tenure by a Michigan head football coach in nearly 100 years.
“I was looking at it on social media this morning,” said Zayd Kahn, 19, a business major, “and I was like, ‘That’s crazy.'”
“They fired him so fast,” Audrey Beindit, 18, a political science major, said about Moore, who before being hired by Harbaugh at Michigan in 2018 had assistant-coaching stops at Central Michigan and Louisville. “I’m concerned about his family and his personal life, and obviously, he has mental-health problems. … It’s definitely concerning.”
Butt, an All-American at Michigan in 2016 who now is an analyst at the Big Ten Network, echoed those sentiments.
“It stinks. It stinks for my wife, too. She went there. We both have a pit in our stomachs,” Butt said. “There’s a wife and a newborn infant, and their lives are ruined, and they had no say in it.
“It just doesn’t represent anything I would want to be connected to.”
What’s next
Michigan now turns its attention to, in the short term, the Citrus Bowl, which is to be played in Orlando, Fla., on Dec. 31. The team practiced Thursday and plans to move ahead with the game under interim coach Biff Poggi, who was associate head coach under Moore. Bowl representatives didn’t return a request for comment Thursday.
Michigan also is searching for a new head coach at a difficult time, when so many of the game’s most-sought-after coaches have recently taken new jobs or signed new contracts at their current jobs. Michigan also is looking for a coach just days after more than 20 recruits formally committed to Michigan’s 2026 recruiting class, under the assumption that Moore was going to be the head coach.
Recruits will be given the option to look elsewhere if they choose and already at least one high-profile recruit, four-star tight end Matt Ludwig, has expressed the desire to do so. The transfer portal window opens Jan. 2, though Michigan’s current roster will get a 15-day window that starts once the school names its next head coach.
Lincoln, the UM law student, said the next coach must be a person of “high character.”
Former Michigan football players agreed.
“At the end of the day, Michigan is still Michigan,” former offensive lineman Jack Miller said. “And as long as they get somebody who deserves to be the head man there, they’ll be able to get the right players to go play on the field.”
Said former UM quarterback Devin Gardner: “It’s a bit of a stain on the amazingness that is being a Michigan Man. However, we must move forward. We pray that Michigan will be in a better place with a real leader of men.”
@tonypaul1984
Staff Writers Angelique S. Chengelis, Charlie Ramirez, Sarah Atwood, Kara Berg and Rob Snell contributed.
