AFTER NFL, MOORE TOOK HARD ROAD TO CALLING
USD’s new football coach spent 4 years as detention officer
His nearly seven-year NFL career in the rearview mirror, Brandon Moore faced the dilemma all professional athletes must encounter.
What now?
“I was so ready to move on to the next thing and trying to figure out what that is is crippling,” said the 44year-old Moore, hired last month as the University of San Diego’s 14th head football coach. “I’d identified myself as a football player for so long, I didn’t see what that next avenue was. I thought there was more to me than being a coach.”
He worked for more than four years as a detention officer for the Maricopa County sheriff’s office in Arizona. Dressed in tactical gear and carrying a firearm, he worked in the jail.
“Whenever my unit was engaged, it was bad,” said Moore. “We responded to a few murders. Just really, really dark things. I saw eyes gouged out, pencils in the head. You want to leave that at work, but I guess it changed me a bit.”
His wife, Sheree, told him not so gently that it was time to find a new career path.
“I didn’t want to coach,” said Moore, “until my wife told me that’s what I was going to do.”
The career change has worked out rather well. After six years as an assistant coach at Division II Colorado School of Mines, Moore was named the Orediggers’ head coach last season. In his first year as a head coach, Moore led Mines to a 13-3 record and an appearance in the national championship game, losing to Ferris State.
Now he finds himself at USD, the head coach of a successful, non-scholarship Football Championship Subdivision program.
Asked what drew him to USD, Moore said: “I can win on the Division I level. Also, I get to do it with smart kids who want to be here. Their sole mission is being a good person and having a degree that can sustain them for the next 40 years of their life.
“They’re not here for that flash-in-the-pan, instant gratification.”
Moore grew up in Baldwin, N.Y., on Long Island. The youngest of five children, including four boys, he was raised in an athletic fam
ily. Three of the boys played college football. His brother Rob played 10 years in the NFL as a wide receiver with the Jets and Cardinals.
Rob Moore finished his career with 628 catches for 9,368 yards and led the NFL in receiving yardage in 1997.
Brandon Moore said things were “very, very competitive but I was always the little brother.”
“My success and my abilities were fostered,” he added. “They were always beating me, but always teaching.”
Brandon Moore is 10 years younger than his brother Rob. Despite the age difference, the brothers are close.
“Rob was like his second father,” said Ceola Moore, the brothers’ mother.
In his rookie season, Rob picked up Brandon and took him to the Jets’ summer practices. Brandon joined Rob on vacations in Florida. Rob took his little brother to NBA games, where Brandon met Michael Jordan and shook his hand.
“I watched my brother struggle, saw the mission he was on and I emulated him,” said Brandon.
A three-year starter at linebacker, Brandon played at Oklahoma under Bob Stoops, helping the Sooners win the 2000 national championship.
“Just a tough, hardplaying guy. Easy to coach,” said Stoops. “A wonderful person. I can’t brag enough about the guy.”
Moore was undrafted out of college, signed with the 49ers as a free agent and played six seasons in San Francisco. In 2006, he led the Niners in tackles and sacks. He has one career interception at the expense of Chris Simms.
In 2010, his final NFL season, he played two games late in the year with the Chargers.
Moore said he was reluctant to coach “because I was afraid I’d get too attached (to the players.) But I think that’s what makes me a good coach. I can form those connections and they’re important to me.”
His players could feel the love.
“At football banquets for School of Mines, you hear those boys go on stage, the way they spoke about him, that was the most moving thing,” Sheree Moore said.
Sit down with Moore for an hour in his trailer office behind Torero Stadium’s east end zone and you realize he doesn’t fit the old-school, football-head-coach stereotype. His voice is gentle. He speaks eloquently comes across as erudite.
“My mother didn’t allow anything other than the queen’s English in the house,” he said. “She was very focused on how we presented ourselves and what came out of our mouths.”
Said Rob: “I always tease him that of all of us, he was the only one who went to a private school.” and