Sherrone Moore fired for cause...

[Mr.Bojangles]

@Mr.Bojangles

Mine are really fat.

 

[Baron Winnebago]

Only on account of he probably doesn't know where she lives.

Some people like to lift people up, some like to tear them down. Guess we know which one you are

 

[turek420845]

I would really like to get Desmond Howard's take on this.

 

[Huskersballz]

This guy is going to be with Mel Tugger sucking dick under a bridge for $20 the way this flame out is going.

 

[Quint]

I would really like to get Desmond Howard's take on this.

That could be…..entertaining.

 

[V-Doub]

I would really like to get Desmond Howard's take on this.

“Nebraska should be kicked out of the B1G for letting this happen to Michigan.”

 

[Irv]

Are there any adults left in the room at ESPN? Adam Schefter's Sherrone Moore debacle says no​

Summarize

Drew Lerner12/12/2025

The guardrails are completely gone for ESPN's biggest stars.

This originally appeared in Friday’s edition of The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter with the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis. Sign up here and be the first to know everything going on in the sports media world.

The firing and subsequent arrest of Michigan head football coach Sherrone Moore quickly became the story of the week in sports media when the news broke on Wednesday evening.

By now, you know the broad strokes. Moore was let go for having an inappropriate relationship with a Michigan football staffer. The university had investigated the affair this past summer, but did not obtain “credible evidence” until earlier this week. Once the evidence was in their hands, Michigan acted swiftly to remove Moore.

Hours after the news initially broke, the story took a disturbing turn. Authorities detained Moore on Wednesday night in Pittsfield Township, MI. Immediately, rumors began to fly on social media, though there was little in the way of fact-based reporting on the matter.

That changed Thursday morning when John U. Bacon, a longtime local reporter and author, appeared on Fox 2’s Good Day Detroit to outline his findings regarding Moore’s detainment.

Bacon confirmed that the internet rumors were at least directionally correct. Moore broke into the Michigan football staffer’s home, grabbed a knife, and apparently threatened to harm her and himself. That’s when he was taken into protective custody.

While Bacon and others worked the beat to provide the public with more information, ESPN took a different approach, at least for two hours on Thursday morning.

Those two hours I’m referring to, you probably won’t be surprised to hear, were the network’s flagship morning program, First Take. It didn’t take long for the show’s coverage of the Sherrone Moore story to become puzzling when self-proclaimed “Michigan Man” Adam Schefter took the lead and blatantly carried water for the exiled coach.

“What we haven’t heard yet is Sherrone Moore’s side of this. And he gets his say in this particular situation as well. And I do know he felt like people had it in for him for an awful long time there while he was at Michigan. He felt like there were people who were out to get him,” Schefter said. “So all these things can all be true. It’s possible that, yes, Michigan does have evidence that he had an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. And it could be that Sherrone Moore is right that people had it in for him.

“But the whole situation, itself, is just sad and tragic. Because now we have an individual who had his professional life, his personal life completely upended. We have a school with a bunch of players who don’t have a coach to turn to right now. We have a school in search of a new coach to lead forth that program. There are a whole host of things that have transpired here that have led this to be a completely surreal wild situation, that if you heard about it, you wouldn’t believe it because it almost seems made up.”

Independent of Schefter’s bizarre defense of Moore, which we’ll get to in a moment, ESPN’s decision to make him the face of this story is mind-boggling. Adam Schefter is an NFL insider. Let me repeat that. Adam Schefter is an NFLinsider. What is he doing “reporting” on the biggest story of the day in college football?

ESPN has any number of actual reporters who could’ve lent their expertise to the story. Pete Thamel. Dan Wetzel. You know, the reporters who initially broke the story and cover college football full-time. Why weren’t they the go-to reporters for First Take?

Then, of course, there’s the obvious conflict of interest that “Michigan Man” Schefter has when covering this story. He has a well-documented history of defending Moore, absolving him of any wrongdoing in Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal last year. He wears his Wolverine fandom on his sleeve. Fine. In today’s day and age in sports media, that’s often part of the gig, for better or for worse. What we don’t see is Mike Greenberg presented as the face of unbiased, fact-based reporting on the latest New York Jets quarterback controversy. But that’s how Schefter is being presented when covering the Moore situation on ESPN.

Now let’s get to the meat of what Schefter actually said. His point, broadly speaking, was that Michigan brass had it in for Moore before any evidence of an improper relationship with a staffer emerged. The undertone, of course, was that Michigan could simply be using this incident as a convenient opportunity to fire Moore with cause, thus avoiding any buyout clauses in his contract.

Not only is that a grossly irresponsible thing to suggest, knowing that Michigan had evidence of the relationship and also knowing Moore was actively in police custody, but it’s entirely beside the point. Who cares if Michigan had it out for Moore before this happened? Unless Michigan administrators are lying to us, we know the improper relationship did happen. Whatever they thought about Moore prior is entirely irrelevant.

Yet Schefter’s defense of Moore was presented as the authoritative take during the A-Block of ESPN’s most-watched morning show. He’s a news breaker, after all. Shouldn’t he be trusted?

Credit where credit is due, much of the First Take panel offered some pushback on Schefter after he was given carte blanche to describe the case as he saw fit.

But the entire debacle laid bare just how atrophied ESPN’s editorial guardrails are in 2025. Not even two months ago, we were having a similar discussion about how ESPN covered the FBI’s bombshell gambling probe into an active NBA player and head coach. In that case, ESPN leaned on another of its star insiders, Shams Charania, to provide little substance or actual reporting on the breaking news. At least Shams was in the right sport. Schefter is out of his league here.

It begs the question: Who are the adults in the room at Bristol who can prevent this nonsense from happening on their air? Once upon a time, there was probably someone with the sense to tell Adam Schefter, “No. You actually can’t go on First Take to defend the disgraced head coach of your alma mater while you present as a neutral observer.”

But we are firmly in the superstar era of ESPN, where talents of Schefter’s stature get to pick and choose what they do, what they say, and where they say it. The guardrails are gone. And instead of doing the responsible, journalistic thing, ESPN is happy to let the inmates run the asylum. You’re not paying Schefter $10 million per year to sit on the bench, after all. Right?

 

[Baron Winnebago]

Yes Adam, Michigan football and Sherrone Moore's life were totally upended. And who happened to be the upender in this story?