Gary Moeller. Undervalued? Easily forgotten? Overrated?

What sort of alternate universe are you living in? LC has as many national championships as Steve Spurrier does, and was a hair away from playing in another one. Both of which place him ahead of Bo Schembechler in that respect.

Does this mean that Bo never took us to the next level?

Carr's teams won outright or shared six Big Ten Titles. Fritz Crisler's teams won exactly one. Are you going to say that Crisler never took us to the next level?

Wasn't this when the tiff with Les Miles occured also which led to him not being strongly considered to replace Lloyd?

for a longer time than he did. It's really unfortunate what happened how things turned out. I really believe if he was the coach for a longer time - he would have become one of Michigan's best coaches

Man, I remember the good old days, when Michigan Men grew on trees.

Period!  

It's a common misconception that Moeller was fired.  But he actually resigned after refusing to accept Joe Roberson's offer of a one year's leave of absence to "sort out his problems."

Bo heard about Moeller's arrest at first over the radio while he was packing to leave for a fishing trip in Mexico.  After several failed attempts to reach Moeller by phone, Bo left a voice-mail telling Mo where he could be reached and to call him any time.  He ended the message by saying, "Don't do anything until you talk to me."  Moeller never returned his calls.  Once Bo was down in Mexico, he got a copy of the USA today covering the Moeller drama and Roberson was quoted as saying the incident wouldn't cost Gary his job.  At that point, Bo stopped worrying about the issue and forgot about it.  But once he got back to Ann Arbor, he found out Moeller had resigned.  By then, there was nothing he could do. 

Things might have been very different had Bo not been on vacation at the time.  Even our rival coaches (George Perles at MSU and John Cooper at OSU)  thought Moeller got a raw deal and went on record saying so. 

Thank you for starting this thread. I was actually kind of thinking about Moeller's tenure at Michigan the other day and wondering what would have been if he had been able to keep his job. Moeller's teams were the first Michigan teams that I really have memories of. The 1991 ND game in particular was amazing. I still remember exactly where I was when Desmond got tripped against MSU. I loved watching Elvis Garbac and Todd Collins. Those Michigan teams were really stocked with a lot of talent. I am not sure how long Moeller would have been at Michigan or how he would have adapted, but it is still nice to look back at his teams and be able to remember some of the great games.

Coach Mo was the coach when I was a lowly undergrad staffer at the Daily.  Unlike Bo, who intimidated the press with his temper, and Lloyd, who dismissed the press with his intellect, Coach Mo was human, and sometimes too much so with his rambling news conferences and ADHD answers.  He was a class act though, in every sense of the word, and never ducked a question, even after that difficult Colorado game.

Coach Mo was also responsible for bringing Coach Lloyd to Michigan.  Mo spent two seasons at Illinois during the late 70s, and Lloyd was his DB coach.  When Bo brought him back to Ann Arbor after an unjustified sacking, Lloyd came back with Mo.

1994 was a rough year for Michigan football.  We had the Colorado game.  We had home losses to Penn State and Wisconsin, and we finished the regular season with a lackluster loss at Ohio State.  In addition, there were numerous arrests of football players on campus, including the infamous Shonte Peoples incident.  The mood on campus was negative, and it affected Coach Mo, deeply.

The Excalibur incident took place during the last week of school in April back in 1995.  Many athletic personnel goes on vacation during May; spring ball was over, May was a dead period in recruiting, and summer camps didn't begin until June.  Before Bo left for Europe, he specifically instructed Mo not to resign, and Bo will go to Duderstadt to fight for his behalf after he returned.  However, Joe Roberson, who was a new AD and was clueless about how to run major college athletics, exerted so much heat on Mo that Mo gave up.  When Bo returned, Mo had cleaned out his office.

The release of the drunken rant tapes turned Coach Mo into a national punchline.  The stench followed even after he went into the NFL and experienced success with the Lions.  That turd Millen, being a stooge of the media that he was, was never going to give him a chance.

Coach Moeller is a good man, and I wish we do more to bring him back to the family.

I would like to throw something out there that I haven't seen said.

I was pretty young at the time, but one of my earlier memories of Coach Mo was either 1992 or 1993. Coach Moeller and the other coaches were on the sidelines of the game and the camera kept zooming in on shots of their watch faces with the number 5 on the glass of the face signifying 5 consecutive Big Ten champions. I don't remember if it was '92 and they were going for number 5, or if it was '93 and they were showing that they wanted to defend the 5 championships.

And Coach Moeller was the coach for the last 3 of those 5 straight. Haven't seen anything like that since Moeller's been gone, and like many have mentioned, those years gave us some awesome memories.

Undervalued.

If Gary Moeller had been able to keep himself out of trouble, there may never have been a Lloyd as head coach.  I'm too young to remember anything but the tail end of the Bo era, and while Moeller had a couple mediocre years, he always took care of business against OSU.  He is way undervalued and it's not even close.

Bo always had high praise for his former assistants, but he may have considered Moeller the greatest of all.  He served as both his defensive coordinator (on the great '85 defense, no less) and offensive coordinator ('87-'89).  It was an easy decision for Bo to name Mo as his successor. 

Mo was a very innovative offensive coach.  He introduced the no-huddle to Michigan, and was so effective with his mass, situational substitutions that the Big Ten had to create a "too many men in the huddle" penalty because defenses couldn't keep up.  And of course, he recruited the bulk of the 1997 national title team (including Mr. Woodson).  He holds a fine place in our football history. 

What I remember best was how Mo would get really fired up during the game, especially screaming at the refs when he didn't like a call... he'd freak out even more than Bo. Sometimes it seemed like he was so busy screaming that he'd forget that he needed to do something else, like send in the plays.

Mo was the best coach the Lions ever had.  I remember thinking the day they didn't retain him that it was a huge mistake.  The Lions are still bad.

Some classic games from the Moeller years...

I was a freshman in '73 when we went undefeated and tied OSU 10-10. Bo was a great regular season coach but was dreadful in bowl games. As a result almost every year ended with a loss and a sour taste. My feelings were that there was a lot of relief when Bo retired and Mo was given a chance.

Does any one else believe, as I do, that there was  zero tolerance for Mo's ugly behavior as a result of Woody's punching the Clemson player? It only takes one incident if it is bad enough.

As someone born in the late 80's, I didn't know much about Moeller.  I've been a fan of UM my whole life but didn't really start paying close attention until my junior year (04) of high school school and by that point there wasn't much talk of Moeller.  All I knew about his "firing" was from my dad telling me that the coach of the Lions had been the coach at Michigan and had been fired for some type of public drunkeness incident.  Thank you to everyone that added something to this thread because I really learned a lot of stuff that I had no idea about.  At the same time, I hate all of you for informing me of how awesome of a coach Moeller was and how much success he could have had.