BOONE, N.C. — In North Carolina’s mountains, a football coach named Jerry Moore led Appalachian State to new heights two decades ago.
Now 84, Moore coached the Mountaineers from 1989-2012 and built a dynasty. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, he directed the Mountaineers all the way to the top of the mountain, winning three straight national titles at the FCS level. Those were the first three NCAA football championships any institution from the state of North Carolina had won, at any level.
Moore also coached the Mountaineers to arguably the most famous upset in college football history — a 34-32 win against No. 5 Michigan, in the 2007 season opener. Moore earned his way into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2014.
In this interview, Moore talked about all of those championships, the brilliance of quarterback Armanti Edwards, and the chaotic upset in Ann Arbor. He also spoke honestly about making peace with his difficult departure from Appalachian State after the 2012 season and why he again fully embraces the program today. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity and can be found in longer form on the “Sports Legends of the Carolinas” podcast.
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— Scott Fowler: I know you’re from Texas. How long have you been in Boone?
— Jerry Moore: Well, I was an assistant coach at Arkansas in ‘88. And Jim Garner was the athletic director here. And Jim called me and one thing led to another and I met Dr. (John E.) Thomas, the chancellor. And I just saw it as a great opportunity. I didn’t know we’d be here this long. We kind of fell in love with the people here. Mountain people.
— SF: Before that, how and where did you grow up?
— JM: I grew up in Bonham, Texas, home of Sam Rayburn, speaker of the house. When I was a freshman in high school, we were 0-10 (as a football team). We celebrated if we won the coin toss. We were terrible.
And then the next three years we only lost five games and two of those were in the playoffs. We had a terrific high school coaching staff. One was my Sunday school teacher and one was the best football coach I’ve ever been around.
I chose Baylor (for college). I was a receiver. We went to the Gator Bowl our senior year. We were good. Several of us got opportunities in the NFL. Not very many of us made it, but we had the opportunity. And that’s where I met Margaret (Moore’s wife of 60-plus years).
We met when we were freshmen and we dated for three years and got married. And we played a lot of tennis. That was our entertainment. Then from there, I got cut by the Dallas Cowboys.
— SF: How’d you get started in coaching?
— JM: My high school coach called me and asked me to come coach for him at Corsicana High School. And Margaret taught elementary school across the street from the high school. The third year there at Corsicana, which is 50 miles south of Dallas, we were the only undefeated team in the state of Texas. We had a terrific football team.
And then I went to SMU for seven years (under head coach Hayden Fry). … Tom Osborne asked if I’d be interested in coming to Nebraska, and I went there for seven years. Then I came back to Texas as the head coach at North Texas State University. And we were there for two years and were 11-11. From there, to Texas Tech (as a head coach in the old Southwest Conference). That was a tough time for me. We never had a winning season.
(After getting fired), I was out of coaching for 16 months. Then I went to Arkansas, to be a volunteer coach under Ken Hatfield. The pieces began to fit together. Garner (the Appalachian State AD) called me and offered me the job on the phone. I had never been to Boone.
— SF: What did you look for when recruiting a potential App State player?
— JM: (Laughs) Now I’m not an App State guy. I’m an Appalachian State guy. They took me in a room after they hired me here and made me learn how to pronounce “Appalachian State.”
— SF: OK, what did you look for in an Appalachian State player?
— JM: The first thing is that they wanted to come to Appalachian State. We worked hard. We had high goals. You hear people talk about family? We were a family.
— SF: You won your very first national championship in 2005, in the pre-Armanti Edwards area. Tell me about that game in Chattanooga, Tenn., against Northern Iowa in the final.
— JM: We had great preparation, but the problem was that our quarterback Richie Williams was hurt. Trey Elder was our backup quarterback.
Trey did OK in the first half but we were behind and it looked like if Richie had been well, we would have been in good shape. And so I remember walking off the field at halftime and I said, “We’ll go with Richie in the second half. We’ve just got to protect him. He can’t get hit.”
And early in the third quarter, we had a third-down play where he completed a long pass, and Richie had to go down the field to get in the huddle. He was hobbling. He was limping. And our fans went wild.
