Would you drive through the night to interview for a job you want?
This past January, Texas A&M needed a wide receivers coach. David Beaty departed a month prior for the head coaching job at Kansas, and National Signing Day was fast approaching. At the request of his boss, Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M associate AD for football Justin Moore lifted his cell phone to his ear and called Virginia Tech wide receivers coach Aaron Moorehead.
Via Houston Chronicle A&M beat writer Brent Zwerneman:
Kevin Sumlin tells Houston TD Club that his first impression of new WR coach Aaron Moorehead was a great one. Moorehead climbed in his car in Blacksburg, Va., at around 10 p.m. after getting a call from the Aggies and Justin Moore, and started driving to College Station, with the promise to be there for an 8:30 a.m. interview. (He was hired).
As you can see by the map above, Blacksburg-to-College Station is an 1,171-mile one-way trip. Either Moorehead drove 111 miles an hour to make the trip in 10-and-a-half hours or Sumlin is fudging on the details a little bit. Either way, it's the spirit of the story that matters, not the details.
Here's an update that makes more sense:
Moorehead won a Super Bowl as a member of the Indianapolis Colts and had just completed his second season coaching the Hokies' wideouts, a job that paid him $175,000 a year according to USA Today. This wasn't some 27-year-old graduate assistant with one line on his resume scrapping for his first job. Moorehead had skins on the wall and a job that paid him more than enough money to cover his needs, and yet he acted like a unproven coach living on a diet of cafeteria food and Ramen noodles. Sumlin would have waited for Moorehead to fly to College Station, but Moorehead didn't want to take that chance. In his mind, he couldn't to give his competition for the job one extra minute to sway Sumlin's mind in their favor.
Sumlin hired Moorehead for his abilities to develop the Aggies' wide receivers and his skills as a recruiter, but that level of dedication and pure want-to certainly didn't hurt.
And if an established position coach shows that kind of desperation - the right kind of desperation -for a job, it provides a nice lesson for everyone else below him on the coaching ladder. When chasing after a coveted job - which, don't kid yourself, is every job in football - young coaches can't delay any opportunity they have to showcase themselves.
