Q&A with Jerry Moore: head football coach Appalachian State University.

AFCA: You have been coaching football for 40 years, what were your thoughts when your team won the national championship this season?

Jerry Moore: Many people have asked me that question and the highlight for me is when our quarterback took a knee toward the end of the game. I knew then that there was no way we could lose the game. It was a great feeling for our team and our school because we were the first team to win a national championship for our school. We were also the first football program in North Carolina to win a national title. We weren't thinking about those things during the moment, but in the locker room and the bus ride home, it hit our program what we accomplished and what it took to get to that point.

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AFCA: What does winning a national title mean to Appalachian State University as a whole and what does it mean to the community in Boone, North Carolina?

JM: It is still a buzz around here and it has been two months since the championship game. We are an isolated town in the mountains with a newspaper that comes out three times a week. For people who may have never set foot on this campus, it means a whole lot to them. And it means a lot to current and former students who went to Appalachian State because their pride for the school has grown after our victory. Our players have been asked to speak at local schools and churches a lot more after we won the title.

AFCA: You have had some great teams in your 17 years at Appalachian State, but what put this team apart from the others that propelled them to a national championship?

JM: We have two or three other teams that were just as good, but we stayed injury free for the most part, except for our quarterback, and the leadership on this year's team was very good. We played a great game against Furman in the semifinals after losing to them in the regular season. This team was very close with one another right from the very beginning. Richie Williams, Joe Suiter and Brad West were our three captains and they were great leaders this year.

AFCA: For years, the offense you used was the Power-I formation, but a couple of years ago you switch to a no-huddle, spread offense. Do you think that switch in offense helped put your team at the elite level in Division I-AA?

JM: There is no question that change in our offensively philosophy was what put us on top. Originally, we were just going to insert the no-huddle at different places in the game to change the tempo. During spring practice before we were going to implement it into our game plans, I decided to spend most of that practice time in no-huddle. We went through all of spring practice with no-huddle and liked it so much that we decided to go no-huddle all of the time. We haven't huddled in 2 1/2 years. Our team wouldn't know what to do if we decided to huddle up before a play. Our players and coaches like that type of offense and we have fun with it. We upped our point production to 12 or 15 points per game, which made our fans really like the new offense.

AFCA: You spent the majority of your coaching years in Texas and Nebraska, but what led you to Appalachian State University?

JM: After I left Texas Tech University in 1985, I was out of coaching for two seasons. I was doing well financially, but I wasn't real happy because I loved to coach football. Danny Ford, who was at Clemson during that time, was a good friend of mine and he invited me to watch practice and go to some games. After spending some time with his team, I kept telling myself that I wanted to get back into the game.

So, I called Tom Osborne at Nebraska and Ken Hatfield, who was at Arkansas, and asked for some advice. Coach Hatfield asked me to come to Arkansas and be a volunteer coach. At the time, we had three kids in college and four apartments to pay rent on. I didn't think it was such a good idea to quit my job and become a volunteer coach. My wife Margaret knew that I was unhappy with my current job and she told me to go for it. So we loaded up the car and drove the Fayetteville, Arkansas, and went to work. My wife got a job teaching second grade and we found a $200 a month apartment so I could start coaching again.

Ken Hatfield really made a difference in my life because he came along with that offer at the right time. Ken even made me a recruiting coordinator just to get me a salary. After we played UCLA in the Cotton Bowl, Appalachian State called to see if I wanted to be their head coach. I didn't know where the school was and I couldn't even spell it right. I went for an interview during the winter and I called my wife back and told her that she wasn't going to believe where this place was because it looked like a post card. I flew back to Fayetteville and we drove to Boone, North Carolina, the next week and haven't left.