THE MOST SENSE: MICHIGAN APPOINTS MOORE, WHILE DEBOER LOSES TRANSFERS

When players have power over the transfer portal, it’s logical to hire a coaching successor from down the hallway instead of reaching from Alabama to Washington for DeBoer, who is losing major talent

     The family expands, with blue Gatorade and a trophy in gold brackets. Sherrone Moore is the new head coach at Michigan, replacing Jim Harbaugh, who said online, “The only person I would want to do the job. I have 100 percent conviction that he will make us all very proud!!!” Blake Corum took praise to another level after winning MVP honors in the national title game, realizing Moore finished 4-0 while Harbaugh was on watch-at-home probation last season.

     “He has more top-10 wins than head coaches who have been head coaches for a long time,” he said.

     Nor should it shock a soul in Ann Arbor that Moore is making lowball money. He’ll receive $500,000 annually in base salary for five seasons — along with $5 million in added compensation in Year 1 and an extra $500,000 if he remains coach for the entirety of each season, along with bonuses. This is an industry, remember, where Texas A&M spent $76 million to buy out Jimbo Fisher when he was fired. And where Dabo Swinney makes $10.9 million a year, a growing mistake, and Kirby Smart sees $10.7 million. And where Kalen DeBoer’s deal will exceed $10 million annually to replace Nick Saban at Alabama.

     Armed with a championship, the administration can go soft with Moore, who rose from his status as offensive coordinator after stints as a tight-end coach at Central Michigan and Louisville. It’s called hooking one’s finger into a coattail, but it works in 2024, when players have all the power via the transfer portal and NIL, also known as Names, Images, Likenesses. He inspired the Wolverines as a leader amid Harbaugh’s wrongdoing and kept winning as an interim coach during a 15-0 season, including victories over Ohio State and Penn State. They like him, to the critical point that few kids are expected to apply for transfers. Don’t be surprised if Moore continues to contend amid West Coast intrusions in the Big Ten, which will have Ohio State ravenous but still needing to beat an in-house Harbaugh successor.

     “We’re hungry for more,” Moore said Saturday in a press conference. “If you work your tail off, dreams can come true. I'm going to continue to work as hard as I can. I’ve always gone by the philosophy, work like a GA. I always want to keep that mindset even as the head coach.”

     Only one man is more enthused. “I have no doubt he will successfully transition from OC to HC — he had that opportunity 4 times this year, especially PSU, Maryland and OSU," Harbaugh told the Associated Press in a text. “Proof is in the pudding.”

     And in the portal.

     Suddenly, the differences between Alabama and Michigan are pronounced and, swear to Saban, could impact college football immediately and down the road. Imagine the Wolverines continuing to prosper with what made Harbaugh successful — not the sign-stealing of Connor Stalions and illegal COVID recruiting violations — while the Crimson Tide take a devastating step back. While athletic director Warde Manuel and president Santa Ono accepted the newfangled NFL coach’s blessed word on Moore, the Crimson Tide went outside the program, outside the state, outside the Southeastern Conference and nearly outside the American plane, considering their replacement’s background came in South Dakota.

     They don’t know DeBoer. They don’t know if he can sing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Saban, Bear Bryant and … who? They’re aware, like the rest of us, that he came from nowhere to go 25-3 at Washington and reached the championship game. But maybe he should have done some thinking before rejecting a $9.4 million annual offer from his previous athletic director, Troy Dannen. Once he arrived in Tuscaloosa and waved at fans off the airplane, DeBoer watched 10 players leave the program. He lost two difference makers to Ohio State — freshman All-America safety Caleb Downs and Julian Sayin, ESPN’s top quarterback recruit this year — while colossal offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor signed with Iowa, wide receiver Isaiah Bond and tight end Amari Niblack opted for Texas and cornerback Trey Amos bonded with Ole Miss.

     “Not alarmed,” DeBoer said.

     He should be concerned, at least. Said Downs, only inciting Alabama fans: “Ohio State’s message to me is that they need me, not want me.”

     Sayin is thrilled to be a future starter in Columbus. “You think of the consistency, the standard,” he told On3.com. “The track record with quarterbacks, with winning games, draft picks, it's the standard of college football.”

     So along with helping Ohio State take on Michigan, Oregon, Washington, USC and others in the Big Ten, while helping Texas and Ole Miss in the SEC, DeBoer is doing what, exactly? That’s what they’re asking in his state. “I knew this was the right move,” he said at his press conference. “I knew this was a thing that, not that I had to do, but that I really wanted to do. But it wasn’t easy.”

     It’s becoming harder, especially when kids who once primarily looked at Alabama and Georgia have offers in Texas and Oklahoma. Those who have stayed are getting to know DeBoer, including quarterback Jalen Milroe. At Michigan, they were there to see an assistant crawling with Harbaugh to win glory. They relate to Moore, the first Black head football coach at Michigan. They’ve heard him discuss life growing up in Kansas, moving on in life with his white wife and biracial children. They saw him cry on the field after winning.

     “Really, I don’t see color,” he said. “That’s just life, especially in these successful positions. But it’s not about me. It’s about these kids. That’s all I care about. Myself, how I’m viewed, people talking about me crying — I can honestly say I don’t think about any of that.”

     He thanked the team. “You just trust in the players,” he said. “The players give you full confidence, too, to call the game however you want to call it and make the decisions, and those kids really — they’re the reason why it was easier for me than it probably would have been.”

     And Michigan thanked him, expecting more than a 4-0 start. “Jim talked effusively about Sherrone before the season, after the season and in our conversation on Wednesday and really gave me the insight why he was our choice," Manuel said.

     “I love it,” said touchdown-bursting back Donovan Edwards, who returns. “If anybody deserves it, it's him."

     But overseeing it all, from his new home in Los Angeles, was Harbaugh. Moore was there when he budged and took a pay cut as he struggled to beat Ohio State. Moore was there when he promised to stop interviewing for NFL jobs after failing with Minnesota and Denver. In the end, he went 15-0, won a championship, signed with the Chargers and gave his man a premier gig. “You’ve already got a glimpse of the shining star that he is,” Harbaugh said. “He’s just phenomenal, so smart, works so hard at it.”

     Kalen DeBoer was found in a distant time zone, 2,525 miles and a five-hour flight away, needing a quick update on Lynyrd Skynyrd. Sherrone Moore was just down the hallway.

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.