Sherrone Moore goes to jail. Ryan Day goes to playoff.
Michigan lost to Ohio State in final game of Sherrone Moore’s tenure.
Another scandal rocks Michigan. Fired coach Sherrone Moore gets arrested.
As Ryan Day prepared for the College Football Playoff, Sherrone Moore sat in jail, fired and disgraced, on a cold night in Michigan. Before the Michigan coach wound up defrocked, he lost to Ohio State in his final game.
There’s never been a better time to be a Buckeye fan.
Assault allegations are no laughing matter, but, rivalries being what they are, Bucknuts must be howling at this latest scandal to rock the rival Wolverines. Jail to the cheaters.
The next time Ohio State’s lunatic fringe wants to hit the warpath because Day hasn’t delivered an undefeated season, chill for minute. Appreciate that the only drama surrounding Day this season was a doctored photo that surfaced online and briefly made us wonder whether Day had pierced his chest. (Nope, just the internet being the internet.)
A little thing like losing a close one to undefeated Indiana in the Big Ten championship game must seem like small potatoes after you watch your archrival fire its coach, publicly allege he’d had “an inappropriate relationship with a staff member,” and then Moore got arrested and headed to jail.
College football, I tell ya. It’s wilder than science-fiction.
Moore blew right past Bobby Petrino’s motorcycle, and you can bet the schadenfreude could be felt in East Lansing, Michigan, too. Moore looked at how Mel Tucker ruined his coaching career at Michigan State and said, “I raise you.”
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the wild rumors you read on social media and message boards are untrue or at least wildly exaggerated.
Michigan served the other 1%, all in one day.
This scandal skipped past Connor Stalions’ fake mustache and the NCAA probes and the fines and the probation and sped toward a trifecta crescendo of a firing for moral turpitude, an arrest and a jailing.
In a span of several hours, Michigan fired Moore with a statement that condemned his conduct, and the Pittsfield, Michigan, police followed with a statement announcing Moore was in jail and the subject of an investigation.
We haven’t heard from Moore. Perhaps, he’ll tell a different version of this story. In the meantime, the Block M endures another stain.
It was just two years ago that Moore looked into Fox’s television camera, leaked out some tears, thanked the Lord and saluted suspended coach Jim Harbaugh after a defeat of Penn State.
Life comes at you fast. Moore is forever a meme now.
Meanwhile, the Buckeyes are the playoff’s No. 2 seed, trying to repeat as national champions.
The uninitiated might wonder, what’s that got to do with the price of bail in Michigan?
Well, there are rivalries, and then there’s Ohio State-Michigan. Everything about Ohio State is viewed through the lens of what’s happening with The Team Up North. Some even affixed a mental asterisk to Ohio State’s national championship last season because it came after a loss to Michigan.
Well, Day beat Michigan this season. And, he’s not in jail. Ohio State isn’t scrambling to find a coach in mid-December. Its big problem is figuring out how it came away with only 10 points on four red-zone trips against Indiana.
Fine points, these OSU problems.
Since Day’s promotion to the big chair in Columbus in 2018, after Ohio State’s own scandal on the tail end of the Urban Meyer era …
∎ Penn State fired James Franklin, who never beat Day a single time.
∎ Michigan State endured a series of blowout losses to the Buckeyes. Mark Dantonio retired, his successor Tucker got himself fired for cause amid a scandal of his own, and Jonathan Smith got fired at warp speed for poor performance in two years.
∎ Harbaugh owned Day for a few years, and Michigan cheated its way to glory, before Harbaugh vamoosed to the NFL, where the NCAA’s suits couldn’t reach him, Stalions starred in a bad Netflix doc, and Moore went to jail.
All’s well in Cbus, by comparison.
Now, if only Ohio State can figure out a solve for this Cignetti guy by January.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
