Remembering late Alabama athletic director Mal Moore, and that Pasadena grin | Goodbread
The happiest I ever saw Mal Moore, he'd just stepped outside the Alabama locker room at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, California.
It was Jan. 7, 2010, just three years after his landmark hire of Nick Saban as football coach, and Moore had just witnessed the Crimson Tide's first national championship, a 37-21 win over Texas, since the 1992 team for which Moore himself served as offensive coordinator. Through a thick metal door behind him, reveling players could be heard joyously shouting.
He beamed.
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Thursday marked the 10th anniversary of the former Alabama Director of Athletics' death at age 73. He passed away at Duke University Medical Center of pulmonary trouble, and had stepped down as AD just 10 days earlier. I never saw him look more vibrant than he did answering reporters' questions about the definitive end of what had been a fairly tumultuous 17 football seasons that separated the 1992 team from the one he'd just seen finish undefeated at 14-0.
I wondered if he might let some time pass − perhaps even until the end of Saban's tenure, if that were Saban's preference − before erecting Saban's statue at the Walk of Champions, where all Alabama coaches who've won a national title are honored with a more-than-life-sized bronze likeness.
"Do you plan to have the statue put up right away?" I asked.
He grinned broadly.
"Hell, yes," he said.
He looked, as much as a 70-year-old man could, like a kid on Christmas morning. Saban would later famously tell thousands of fans who came to a formal celebration of that national title that the season marked a beginning, not an end. That was true enough, as Saban would go on to bank five more national titles to date. But for Moore, it was indeed an end, and an emphatic one at that, to a stretch of struggles in the football program − from rapid-fire coaching changes to NCAA probation to losing seasons in 1997, 2000, 2003 and 2006 − that began long before Saban's arrival.
Saban spoke highly of Moore in remembrance Thursday, recalling that he'd once told Moore he was having trouble getting former UA running back Mark Ingram to carry the ball in the proper hand. Moore replied with a story, as was his way, about how Moore once struggled to get a successful UA quarterback to break a bad fundamental habit as well. Legendary UA coach Paul W. "Bear" Bryant instructed Moore to leave the issue alone, he told Saban, because the problem wasn't affecting the player's performance.
"He used to tell me stories like that about players all the time, you know, from the past," Saban said. "I enjoyed it so much. … it was a lesson learned because sometimes really good players, they might not do things exactly like you want them to, but if they’re productive, it’s not worth changing."
True to his word, Moore got busy on Saban's statue.
It was unveiled a little more than a year after he'd signaled its construction in Pasadena, ahead of the A-Day spring game in 2011. Around that time, he told me how much it meant to him that Alabama had found its way back to the top of the college football mountain after all the turmoil the program had gone through during his time as athletic director. At that point, Moore had a little less than two years left to live. But he was still making an indelible mark on UA athletics with steady leadership, along with an amazingly effective skill as a fundraiser.
Ten years after his passing, with Alabama football awash in success over that time, I can only assume that grin from Pasadena hasn't gone anywhere.
Reach Chase Goodbread at cgoodbread@gannett.com. Follow on Twitter @chasegoodbread.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Remembering late Alabama AD Mal Moore, and that Pasadena grin
