Sherone Moore Arraignment: What You Need to Know
Detroit Free Press reporters Tony Garcia and Dave Boucher explain the charges facing Sherone Moore.
- Unlike many white coaches, black coaches are rarely given a second chance after being fired.
- Experts suggest that black coaches are often evaluated collectively, while white coaches are evaluated as individuals.
- The number of Black FBS head coaches has decreased from 17 in 2011 to 14 today.
College football’s two most powerful leagues began the 2025 season with a combined four Black head coaches out of 34 schools nationwide.
∎ There were no black head coaches in the Southeastern Conference.
∎ Four were selected to the Big Ten, including Sherrone Moore, the first Black head coach in Michigan history.
Four months later, only Maryland’s Mike Locksley remains. Experts contacted by USA TODAY Sports said other players, particularly Moore, were fired over scandals that don’t affect white coaches but can disproportionately impact perceptions of other black coaches.
“Black coaches are often evaluated collectively, but our fellow white coaches are evaluated individually,” said former San Jose State University head coach Fitz Hill, who is Black. “That’s the difference. And that’s because when you look at minorities, you group minorities together. It’s just a rational cognitive process.”
But Hill says that’s not fair.
With another round of firings and hirings in college football, USA TODAY Sports has updated its historical data on Black head coaches and gathered additional information to look at the fallout from Moore’s firing from a racial perspective. The picture drawn is never a bright one.
What it means and why it can get worse
Black coaches still rarely get a second chance if they fail, according to data compiled by USA TODAY Sports. The main reason is that first chances are rare. Of the 136 schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), there are only 14 black head coaches and nearly half of the players are black. This is down from 17 out of 120 major college teams in 2011.
Meanwhile, the SEC hasn’t had a non-interim Black head coach since 2020. Of the 34 coaches in the Big Ten and SEC, 33 are white and one is black.
In the bigger picture, all of this comes against the backdrop of universities reeling from the Trump administration’s crackdown on efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“In the current climate, where DEI and initiatives that align with it have been largely sidelined, I fear that things will get worse, not better,” said Richard Lapchik, founder of the Sports and Social Justice Institute.
A short list of black coaches vs. white coaches with second chances.
According to a USA TODAY Sports investigation, only five Black coaches in college football history have been given a second chance as a non-interim head coach in a Power Four conference after previously being fired from another head coaching position in the Football Bowl Division (FBS). It’s a short list: Tyron Willingham, Mike Locksley, Kevin Sumlin, Karl Dorrell and James Franklin, who was recently hired by Virginia Tech after being fired by Penn State in the Big Ten.
Outside of the Power Four League, only three black head coaches in FBS history have gotten a second chance after being fired as an FBS coach: Charlie Strong, Willie Taggart and Derek Mason.
By contrast, 17 current white FBS head coaches are on their second or third chances after previously being fired as FBS head coaches, three in the Big Ten and two in the SEC. LSU’s new coach, Lane Kiffin, is white and was even considered the hottest candidate on the market after previously being fired as head coach of Southern California and the NFL’s Oakland Raiders.
White coaches also overcome scandals
Some white head coaches have survived to get a second chance as a head coach despite being arrested or hiding their affairs with staff members. But some believe Moore won’t get the same opportunity despite leading the University of Michigan to a 9-3 record in 2025. Mr. Moore was arrested on suspicion of violating school rules by concealing an affair with a teacher and breaking into her home after he was fired.
“Will Moore get the same second chance as his white counterpart?” asked Sandy Young, CEO of J. Walcher Communications, which specializes in crisis communications. “In today’s society, where race is treated as ‘other’ and simplified as ‘colored people are bad’ and ‘white people are good,’ Moore may have squandered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Why aren’t black coaches given second chances?
Several factors help explain this, including that people who hire head coaches are often white and tend to hire people who look like themselves. Of the 131 athletic directors who oversaw FBS football programs in 2022, 100 were white, according to the University of Central Florida’s latest coaching report card.
Another reason relates to Hill’s comments about how minorities are unfairly “grouped together” despite their individual differences. For example, after Charlie Strong was fired as head coach at the University of Texas in 2016, he seemed to acknowledge this impact in comments he made to Fox Sports. He was later hired as the head coach at South Florida out of a power conference. But he worried that the failure in Texas would be symbolic.
“When you’re the first minority coach at a major university like that, you feel like so many people are counting on you,” Strong said at the time. “I was mad at myself for not being successful and I was mad at myself because I feel like you let a lot of people down. There’s a limited number of African-American coaches, so when you get on a stage like that…”
Similarly, former NFL safety Ryan Clark said the same applies to the impact of Moore’s shooting at Michigan State.
“He failed not only himself, but the coaching community as well,” Clark said on Instagram. “Had he been successful, the next ‘Sherone Moore’ would have received a favorable evaluation in the interview process. If you were the AD at the University of Michigan, would you feel comfortable hiring someone who reminded you of your former coach who was fired?”
Few schools have ever hired more than two Black coaches
The “grouping” of minority coaches after failure is also supported by evidence that only four major college teams in history have hired at least three Black coaches: Colorado, Stanford, Kent State, and Bowling Green.
After Mr. Hill was expelled from San Jose State University in 2004, Mr. Hill told school administrators that he hoped that Mr. Hill’s lack of success would prevent the school from considering a person of color as a candidate to replace him.
“Do you really think anyone should consider it?” the administrator asked, Hill said.
“From what you’ve said, I can see that you don’t understand the issue,” Hill reportedly responded.
San Jose State never hired a black non-interim head coach after that. The current coach, Ken Niutalolo, is Samoan.
Deion Sanders made a similar point.
Colorado is the only team in the FBS to hire four Black non-interim head coaches, two of whom were fired.
Current Colorado coach Deion Sanders addressed the same issue when he was hired by Colorado athletic director Rick George in December 2022. Sanders, who is Black, replaced Karl Dorrell, who was fired after an 0-5 start in 2022. Dorrell replaced Mel Tucker, who is Black, who left Colorado State after one season in 2019 to become head coach at Michigan State.
“Thank you again, Rick, because there are a number of African-American head coaches across the country who were fired and they were not replaced by an African-American coach,” Sanders said. “But you had the audacity to do something like that. Not just this time, you’ve done something like that several times. So I thank you for your courage. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for looking beyond skin color and ethnicity.”
Mel Tucker and Sherone Moore’s “Grouping”
Another undercurrent to Moore’s firing was that Michigan State University fired Tucker in 2023 after rape victim Brenda Tracy said he made sexual comments to her on the phone in 2022 and masturbated on the phone.
The similarities between their scandals and their firings from two rival Big Ten schools led to racist jokes on social media and grouping them together.
“The fact that we’re so quick to put[Tucker and Moore]on the same page shows how stereotypes about black men and sexual promiscuity work,” said Lou Moore, a sports history professor at Michigan State University who is not related to Sherone Moore.
Tucker and Sherone Moore, like other white coaches, had separate scandals in separate jobs, but were not grouped negatively based on race.
“I think the way we should look at this is that while it’s bad, it certainly doesn’t paint a picture of other people in college sports,” Lapchick said of the Sherrone Moore scandal.
So what’s the answer?
After 110 years of college football, which began in 1869, the first black head coach at the major college level was Willie Jeffries of Wichita State University in 1979.
Since then, USA TODAY Sports has counted only 70 total non-interim Black head coaches in major college football history. In 2005, there were only three. There are 14 people today.
So what’s the fairest way to go in the meantime? It always helps to cast a wider net on your candidates. Hill said it’s important that Black coaches have more “access” to these jobs. Unfortunately, unfair perceptions often override reality.
He wrote a book in 2012 titled “Cracked Back! How College Football Blinds Black Coaches’ Hopes.”
“Awareness always impacts access in the hiring process,” Hill says. He said this, in turn, creates unrealized potential for Black coaches who weren’t given a first or second chance. Many schools, including the University of Alabama, have never hired a black non-interim head coach.
“What would have happened if Nick Saban (former Alabama coach) had been born black?” Hill asked. “He would have been a great coach that never happened at the University of Alabama.”
Other considerations may also help black coaches, as the successful rehabilitation of white coaches like Lane Kiffin has proven.
Failure can sometimes make a coach better, not worse.
Follow reporter Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday.com
