Biography
Mal Moore is probably about as tried and true a fixture in the state of Alabama as the statue of Crimson Tide coaching legend Bear Bryant standing outside Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Except for an eight-year period in the 1980s and his first year out of school, Moore, 72, has resided in Tuscaloosa. In fact Moore has been a part of nine Crimson Tide national football championships. That’s three more than even Bryant, who was head coach from 1958-82, and more than anyone associated with the program.
That doesn't’t qualify Moore for the Alabama sainthood that the Bear has attained, but maybe a big tip of the Houndstooth Hat. For the past 13 years, Moore has directed Crimson Tide athletics, which consists of 21 sports and a $101 million budget. His legacy includes two national football titles in a three-year period from 2009-2011 under Nick Saban, a Moore coaching hire, and a solid financial and administrative footing. As a tribute to his long and illustrious career, the school renamed the former “Football Building” in 2007 as the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility, which now houses the football locker rooms, offices and equipment rooms.
One of seven children in his family, Moore grew up on a farm near Dozier, Ala., where his father was a farmer and ran a saw mill. Moore eventually collected two degrees from the university, but not before he thought about leaving Alabama while playing for the Bear.
“I think any small town country boy when you leave home for the first time a lot of it was just simply homesickness,” Moore said. “And it was playing at Dozier, I don’t think we ever got hit hard. It was kind of like playing in the backyard … When I came here I had never witnessed or never been hit like I was hit here. It was so different. And a lot of players left the team early on.”
But Moore stayed.
“I knew it would just kill my father if I didn’t see it through,” Moore said. “That was the part that kept me hanging on … This is true I think with anybody. You take a fork in the road somewhere along the way.”
Backing up quarterback Pat Trammel in 1961, Moore was a part of his first national championship team when the Crimson Tide went 11-0 and beat Arkansas 10-3 in the Sugar Bowl. Upon graduation in 1963, he spent one season as an assistant at Montana State, but he returned to Alabama to join Bryant’s staff.
During a 19-year period under Bryant, Moore first coached Alabama defensive backs, then quarterbacks and later served as offensive coordinator. The Crimson Tide won five national titles with Moore as an assistant under Bryant (1964, ’65, ’73, ’78 and ’79). At the time of Bryant’s
retirement in 1982, Moore had hoped to succeed the legend as head coach, but he was left without even an assistant coaching job at his alma mater when Ray Perkins was named Alabama’s head man.
Moore almost left coaching, but one Sunday morning Notre Dame head football coach Gerry Faust called Moore and offered him an assistant’s job. Moore stayed in South Bend until 1986 when he joined Gene Stallings in the NFL as an assistant coach (tight ends and receivers) with
the St. Louis-Phoenix Cardinals. Stallings had been an assistant coach at Alabama when Moore was a player.
When Stallings became the Crimson’s Tide’s head coach in 1990, Moore jumped at the chance to return to Tuscaloosa as offensive coordinator. Together, they helped mold Alabama’s 1992 national football championship team.
After the 1993 season, he moved into athletics administration because of health concerns for his late wife Charlotte.
In 1999, when he succeeded Bob Bockrath as Alabama’s athletics director, reality set in about Alabama’s facilities. “I realized we were probably at the bottom of the SEC (Southeastern Conference),” Moore said.
Moore helped Alabama embark on an aggressive capital campaign resulting in $220 million raised for improvements in athletics facilities across the board, including expansion projects (2006, 2010) of Bryant-Denny Stadium, which now seats 101,821 fans.
But he had to find the right coach. Moore first’s three head football coaching hires — Dennis Franchione, Mike Price and Mike Shula — lasted a total of six seasons from 2001-06. In 2007, Moore coaxed Saban, the Miami Dolphins head coach, out of the NFL.
“We didn’t feel we could try out anybody,” Moore said. “We just realized it was one of the most crucial hires. Coach Saban had won the national championship at LSU. I had understood and heard he wanted out of the NFL, so he was the one we targeted.”
The rest is history. Moore’s watch has also produced national championships in women’s gymnastics (2002, 2011 and 2012), women’s golf (2012) and softball (2012). In 2010, his athletics director’s contract was extended through 2014.
In 2011, Moore was elected to the State of Alabama Sports Hall of Fame. He has one daughter, Mrs. Steve (Heather) Cook of Scottsdale, Ariz., and two grandchildren.
