April 1, 2013
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Former University of Notre Dame football coach and a player, assistant coach and longtime athletics administrator at the University of Alabama, Mal M. Moore died Saturday at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. Moore had been hospitalized for approximately three weeks due to a pulmonary condition.
Moore spent three football seasons on Gerry Faust’s Notre Dame football coaching staff from 1983-85. He coached the Irish running backs all three seasons and also served as assistant head coach for two years in 1984-85. Among the standouts he coached was former all-time Notre Dame leading ground-gainer Allen Pinkett who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in each of his last three seasons under Moore (1983-85). Pinkett finished with 4,131 career yards and still holds the Irish career mark for rushing touchdowns with 49.
Moore served on the Notre Dame staff that helped the Irish to a Liberty Bowl win over 13th-ranked Boston College and Doug Flutie to cap the 1983 season and he was part of the Irish staff in ’84 that played in the Aloha Bowl against SMU. He also coached the Notre Dame special teams in 1985.
The Alabama director of athletics from 1999 to 2013, Moore was a football player under legendary Crimson Tide head coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant from 1958-62 and went on to serve as an assistant football coach on Bryant’s staff. Moore held the distinction of being a part of 10 national championship teams as a player, coach and athletics director (1961, 1964, 1965, 1973, 1978, 1979, 1992, 2009, 2011 and 2012), 16 Southeastern Conference championships and 39 bowl trips. He is the only individual connected with the Tide program–and likely the only person in collegiate athletics–to be a part of 10 national football championships.
During Moore’s tenure as director of athletics, Alabama produced national championship teams in football, gymnastics, softball and women’s golf as well as SEC championships in football, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, men’s and women’s golf, men’s cross country and softball. Moore’s dedication to Alabama was recognized in 2007 when the University officially dedicated the facility formerly known as The Football Building as the Mal M. Moore Athletic Facility.
During a coaching career that spanned 31 years, Moore spent 22 of those at Alabama with stops at Montana State, Notre Dame and the NFL’s St. Louis and Phoenix Cardinals. At Alabama, Moore began as Bryant’s graduate assistant in 1964, then as defensive backfield coach for six seasons (1965-70) before becoming quarterbacks coach from 1971-82 and serving as the Tide’s first offensive coordinator starting in 1975. He returned as offensive coordinator under Gene Stallings from 1990-93 before moving into athletic administration.
Born December 19, 1939, Moore was a 1963 graduate of the University of Alabama, earning both an undergraduate degree in sociology and a 1964 master’s degree in secondary education.
A native of Dozier, Ala., he was married to the former Charlotte Davis of Tuscaloosa for 41 years before she passed in 2010 after a long illness. He is survived by one daughter, Mrs. Steve (Heather) Cook of Scottsdale, Ariz., a granddaughter, Anna Lee, and a grandson, Charles Cannon. Funeral arrangements are pending.