Reader shares fond memories of Mal Moore

I just needed to, by “HT.”

I’m no blogger…… My writing consists mainly of to-do lists these days. But there are moments in your life when you’re so overcome with emotion that you just need to write. Helen Keller once said, "Character cannot be developed in ease & quiet. Only thru experience of trial & suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved"…. Nobody knows this better than Coach Mal Moore.

Saturday, we lost one of the last links to the days our grandpas always told us about. This generation has learned to equate the phrase, ‘The Good Ole Boys’, with smoky back room corruption and hundred dollar handshakes. And that’s not entirely a myth…

But Mal Moore represents the best of us. He loved this university like no one else. He served this university like no one else. I could go on and on about his 10 national championship rings, his overwhelming devotion to his beloved wife, Charlotte, his forward thinking that has made our athletic program a dynasty. I could…. But I’m gonna leave that to the real writers.

Instead, I want to enlighten you with ‘The HT’ perspective….

Before last May, I’d had limited dealings with Coach Moore. Okay, let’s be honest. I had seen Coach Moore in the hallways a few times while serving as a recruiting hostess for the athletic program back…. Well, a ‘few’ years ago. But being the ever devoted Bama fan and low-man-on-the-totem-pole booster, I always try to catch Crimson Caravan each year. My mom and I made our way down 280 and into the conference center. Armed with a glass of wine, I was feeling exceptionally bold. Backstory: I’ve been to every one of these and yet to meet Nick Saban. These people are for real. I didn’t camp for the new iphone, I didn’t camp for….. Well, I don’t camp. So needless to say I wasn’t standing in that nonsensical line.

As I’m going thru this whole diatribe to my mom, when what to my wondering eyes do appear?  Coach Mal Moore, y’all….. The man who can be argued as the most important person in the history of our athletic program is walking right by me. Seriously? I got this….

So here I am, in retrospect, looking more like Harvey Updyke than I probably should have. After all the pleasantries, I asked him, “Coach, what would you have done had Saban not boarded that plane?”. His response, “Miss Heather, I’d be in hiding on some foreign beach”… He then went on to discuss our program for at least 15 minutes. The conversation ended and my very weak knees managed to find our table.

Hours later, as we were leaving the conference center, I spotted Coach Moore on the sidewalk alone. In good humor, I said, “Coach Moore, do you need a ride home?”. His response, “Ms. Heather, you’re so kind. But my ride is pulling up.”

Coach Moore never needed acclamation. He just had a love for his gorgeous wife Charlotte, backup quarterbacks, and all things Crimson……

P.S. Any man that remembers your name, let alone adds Miss to it, listened to his mama somewhere down the line….

Quotables: Commentary on Mal Moore from around the web

Moore’s legacy “will be somewhat (tied to Saban), but there’s so much more than that,” Espy said. “We were going through a down time and (Moore) was able to go out and raise millions of dollars to improve the facilities. Those facilities probably had a lot to do with us being able to land coaches like Saban and (men’s basketball coach Anthony) Grant. He supported Sarah Patterson and the gymnastics program and look what it became. He raised up the entire athletic department and deserves a lot of credit for the success that’s taking place now. I think we won four national championships last year, another football championship this year.”

* * *

Moore deserves praise for the recent run of football championships, for the three women's NCAA titles that UA programs won in the spring of 2012. He deserves respect for being a gentleman, a classy representative of Alabama, a calm but strong voice in the Southeastern Conference. Moore's tenure wasn't perfect - no AD has a perfect tenure, because no athletic department wins all of the championships in all of the sports all of the time - but he leaves Alabama a stronger program than the one he inherited. There will be an outpouring of honors and accolades forthcoming that recognizes that progress, an outpouring that has already started. Anyone can see why respect is merited.

* * *

"Mal Moore has left an indelible mark on the University of Alabama," Arkansas AD Jeff Long said, "much like Frank Broyles has done here. The Crimson Tide athletic program has achieved tremendous success under Mal's leadership."

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The crowning achievement of Moore's tenure might just be the hiring of Saban, who has led Alabama to three national championships over the past four years, but Saban was quick to deflect that place of prominence on Moore's highlight-filled timeline.

"I think most things that you would stand here and look around here and see, he’s had some hand in making all the athletic facilities what they are, I think first class in so many ways," Saban said. "More than that he’s a class gentleman, probably as fine as you’ll ever meet, and he’s certainly been a good friend, and his support has certainly been appreciated."

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Moore serves as the strongest sinew connecting Alabama football today with the Bear Bryant Era. For 46 of the past 55 years, Moore has served as a student-athlete, assistant coach or administrator at Alabama.

Think of it -- Moore has won 10 national championship rings as a player (1961), assistant coach (1964, '65, '73, '78, '79 ,'92) and boss (2009, '11, '12). That takes care of his fingers. When Moore recovers from his lung ailment and begins his tenure as special assistant to the university president, Dr. Judy Bonner, he can begin on his toes.

* * *

He doesn't have too much Bama in him. He has just the right amount, and he never felt the need to draw attention to the mutual respect and affection shared by the man and his school. You spend part of six decades of your life at a place, from the start of your journey to adulthood into the later years of your career, that place becomes more than your alma mater and your employer.

It becomes your family. Your home.

* * *

He led a building boom during a recession, twice expanding Bryant-Denny Stadium and transforming the 74-year-old facility into a 101,821-seat palace, one of the jewels of college football.

In the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility, a building that was renamed in his honor on March 28, 2007, he worked in a corner office that overlooks the football practice facilities and the newest addition to the kingdom: a $9 million, 37,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art weight room that opened in February.

"He'll leave a legacy of accomplishment on the facilities, in getting the university through some difficult times," Steve Townsend, a former associate athletic director, said in a 2009 interview.

* * *

Without Moore’s dogged support of all things Saban and the program (have you seen the new football facilities?), the Tide isn’t nearly as successful. There’s a reason Saban hasn’t looked back at the NFL since arriving in Tuscaloosa.

Everything he wants is in the college game. And he can thank Moore.

Now the university can thank Moore, too – with a bronze statue in the Walk of Champions. For a true champion of Alabama athletics.

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In five years, Saban makes the Bama nation forget the previous ten

In January 1997, outgoing Alabama head coach Gene Stallings handed the reins of the Crimson Tide football program to untested but then-popular assistant Mike Dubose. While the program was under NCAA sanctions for impermissible benefits, impermissible agent contact and lack of institutional control, most felt Alabama would suffer a season or two of retooling and be right back in the thick of the yearly title chase.

Over the next ten years, Alabama had three 10-win seasons: 1999, 2002, and 2005. They earned one SEC Championship (1999). In addition to Dubose, the program saw a parade of four head coaches with Dennis Franchione, Mike Price and Mike Shula all taking turns trying to get the Bama train back on the tracks. Franchione fled to Texas A&M after the 2002 season. Mike Price replaced him but never coached a down after a weekend gone awry in a northwest Florida strip club. Mike Shula dove in and came up for air once in four seasons with a 10-win campaign in 2005. The painful, 10-year span between 1997 and 2007 included three losing seasons in which Alabama failed to win five games. They went 4-7 in 1997, 3-8 in 2000 and 4-9 in 2003. The most disgusting exclamation points to disappointing seasons came by watching Auburn fans finally learn how to count. One… Two… Three… SIX!

Many reasonable observers concluded that Alabama’s glory days were over and that it was just another middling member of an increasingly competitive Southeastern Conference.

Indeed, when Shula was dismissed after the 2006 season and Alabama was in the midst of a nearly two-month coaching search, some self-appointed experts tried to convince the Bama Nation that the best they could hope for was stealing a coach from a mid-major team or hiring another untested but popular assistant. There’s no sense in naming names and quoting quotes. Those people know who they are and they know what they wrote and what they said. Water under the bridge, and all, but a lot of these knuckleheads were secretly satisfied that the conference’s alpha wolf looked old, beaten and ready to be finished off.

Athletic Director Mal Moore proved a skeptical nation wrong when he introduced Nick Saban at his first press conference as Alabama Head Football Coach five years and one day ago. When Nick Saban stepped off that airplane; when he walked through that door and stood at that podium, everything changed.

Apologies for rehashing that painful decade preceding that day in January 2007. It had to be done because in the five years since that turning point, Saban has made most Alabama fans forget that time spent wandering in the darkness. In five years, Alabama has had four 10-win seasons. They’ve had two undefeated regular seasons. Two BCS Bowl appearances. Two SEC Championship Game appearances. One more SEC Championship, one National Championship and the opportunity to play for its second in two years. Numerous players named as finalists for and receiving individual awards, including the school’s first ever Heisman Trophy winner in Mark Ingram and a trip to New York as a finalist for Trent Richardson.

The lifeblood of college football success is recruiting, and Saban has that heartbeat steadier and more powerful than ever before. Regardless of which of the last top-drawer prospects Alabama lands on National Signing Day next month, many recruiting analysts are speculating that this may be the best class in program history, topping even the 2008 class Saban hauled in after only one full year on the recruiting trail.

Win or lose in the BCS Championship Game Monday night, there isn’t one reasonable observer who couldn’t conclude that the Alabama football program is exactly where it wants to be. National and conference rivals’ snickering and whispering stopped in January 2007. Sometime during the 2008 season, the surprise turned to concern as Alabama reeled off 12 wins in a row. It turned to abject terror in 2009 and except for a small handful of other “big boys” in the league and around the nation the sense is that it is they whose glory days are gone; that they are the ones who have been passed by. They’d really like to cling to that decade of darkness, but…

The Bama Nation has forgotten it.

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