Coach's winning ways are rooted in solid values

They didn't win a game, those 1953 Purple Warriors of Bonham High School in Texas.

Back then, Jerry Moore, the coach who on Dec. 16 led Appalachian State University to the 2005 NCAA Division 1-AA football title, was a promising 14-year-old freshman end and linebacker.

"We had more talent on that team than we did when I was a junior and senior, when our teams didn't lose to anybody during the regular season," Moore recalls.

"The difference between not winning a game and not losing a game was only one thing: effort. The team with more talent didn't win a game. The team with great effort didn't lose."

More than a half-century later, Moore clings to that lesson and can't resist recounting that slice of Bonham High history to his players.

"I try my best to keep that talk to once every other year or so," says Moore, the Appalachian State coach since 1989. "If you come up with the same message every season, season after season, you reach a point where it just loses impact."

Appalachian pride

At age 66, Moore hasn't lost his impact, either as a football historian or as a game-day motivator and strategist.

Although Division I-AA teams don't have as many scholarship players and aren't on television nearly as much as their counterparts in Division I-A -- the highest level of NCAA football competition -- winning the 16-team I-AA playoff tournament is difficult. The champ has to win four games in less than a month against strong opponents.

Weeks after Appalachian State defeated Northern Iowa 21-16 in Chattanooga, Tenn., to claim the first national title in school history, the thrill lingers in Boone and beyond.

"Oh, yes, the students and the alumni are still buying national championship items," says Lorraine Childers, merchandise manager for the ASU student bookstore. "They're keeping us busy -- busy and happy. There's so much pride in what Coach Moore and that team accomplished for the school that it's hard to explain."

When Moore attended college at Baylor, he didn't plan a coaching career. He was captain of the 1960 Gator Bowl team that ended the year as the nation's 11th-ranked squad, but the degree he received was in finance and economics.

That didn't deter legendary Texas high school coach Jim Acree, who asked Moore to join the staff at Corsicana High.

"We didn't have a dime, but we were as happy as larks," says Margaret Moore, the coach's wife of 45 years.

"We won a state championship, which is such a big deal in Texas that you wouldn't believe it. ... We both got hooked on coaching, I guess."

No one is happier about having Jerry Moore at Appalachian State than first-year athletics director Charlie Cobb, 37, a former assistant coach on N.C. State University's football staff.

In an era of exorbitant coaching salaries, Cobb is getting a relative bargain.

Moore, in his 17th season at Appalachian State, earns $100,000. Many assistant coaches in the Division I-A Atlantic Coast Conference earn considerably more.

"But Jerry isn't in coaching to get rich," Margaret Moore says. "He's in it because he loves it and always has. And we're still in Boone after all these years because we love it here. There's not a better place to be."

Moore has had chances to leave for bigger programs. He won't cite specific schools but says he has listened to a few offers.

"I've coached at the I-A level, and I could have gone back at least a couple of times," he says. "But since I've been here, I haven't been offered a job I want more than this one.

"If you're happy with the job you've got in this business, it means something," he said. "The older you get, the more I think you appreciate that. I'm very happy doing this job."