INDIANAPOLIS — On Thursday afternoon, as Michigan coach Sherrone Moore walked up to his podium and prepared to sit down, he looked out at the throng of reporters awaiting him at Big Ten Media Day and quipped: “You guys know Jim’s not coming back right?”
Moore’s joke landed. The crowd laughed, and Moore himself chuckled, but throughout Thursday, he repeatedly demonstrated that his statement wasn’t completely comedic. In emphasizing his vision for the program and how he plans to build it, Moore painted himself as someone not simply filling big shoes, but making a new footprint. And he’s going about it the only way he knows how — his way.
“I can’t be coach (Harbaugh),” Moore said. “I can’t be Jim Harbaugh and I never will be. So for me, I just go as I go and I’m not gonna change how I am. When I get excited, I’m gonna get excited. When I want to yell ‘smash,’ I’m gonna yell ‘smash.’ When I want us to play violent I’m gonna let our players know. … But when I love them, I love them. And when I feel they need a hug I’m gonna give them a hug. I’m just gonna be me and I can’t change that, I’m not going to change that.”
For Moore and for the Wolverines, the question of who they are without Harbaugh has been pervasive. Harbaugh revamped the program. Harbaugh led the Wolverines to their first national title in decades. And with Harbaugh’s departure, a large portion of the program departed as well. So the question has been, what of that culture and talent remains?
Thursday, Moore was there to make sure that people know that a lot of what worked will be the same — but it will be with his own, new flavor. For instance in his introduction, Moore pulled from Jim and Jack Harbaugh by reiterating their well known mantra of “enthusiasm unknown to mankind,” but he made sure to add the word “contagious” in front of it. And when asked about it later, he corrected reporters who had dropped his addition of the word. It was “contagious enthusiasm unknown to mankind,” not just “enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”
Within that small tweak of a mantra may lie something deeper about what Moore believes his program to be. It’s his program and his style building on the success of Harbaugh’s. Not simply Harbaugh’s program now being guided by him.
More than simple mantras though, many of the core aspects of Michigan’s program will be similar, simply changed to fit who Moore is. His practices will have music — Harbaugh’s didn’t. He will retain the ‘four pillars’ that Harbaugh and former defensive coordinator Jesse Minter implemented, but they’ll be in defensive coordinator Wink Martindale’s hands now. And when it comes to recruiting, he may not get shirtless and bench press like Harbaugh did, but he’ll retain the focus on, “getting to know these guys inside and out.”
“Coach was his own man, and I’m my own man,” Moore said. “So we’ll do it that way.”
To the extent that someone can rebuild a team after a national title, Moore has had the opportunity to do just that. He got to pick new coaches, assign coordinators and build his own staff. But while the personnel — and semantics — as well as the philosophy may have changed slightly, one thing was made clear: His expectations are the exact same as they were the year before.
“Team 145 has done a really good job up to this point of taking the necessary steps to being elite and to do all the things that we set out to do,” Moore said in his introduction. “Win the big games, beat our rivals, beat Ohio State, win the Big Ten, go to the College Football Playoff, and win it.”
And while his aspirations may be lofty, Moore is in a position to have confidence. He doesn’t need to restore people’s faith in Michigan or completely rebuild its program, he simply needs to figure out how to best assemble it.
“For me now, it’s just putting my own flavor on it,” Moore said. “But not changing too much because obviously there’s a lot of things that worked. But anything we can do to get better every single day, we’re trying to do.”
So as he left his podium after 45 minutes and walked back to the staging area, Sherrone Moore had set very clear expectations for who he will and who he won’t be. He will be Sherrone Moore, and he won’t be Jim Harbaugh — but he’s searching for the same outcome.
The post ‘I’m just gonna be me and I can’t change that’: Sherrone Moore bringing his own flavor to Michigan appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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