Named after his offensive line coach at Notre Dame and Pittsburgh native Joe Moore, the award is presented to the most outstanding offensive line in college football and now will be permantently housed at the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the Heinz History Center.
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Taylor, Super Bowl champion with the Packers and now a college football analyst for CBS, provided excellent insight into the college game today and told some remarkable stories about his time spent with Joe Moore and the impact Moore had on his life and countless others. If you haven't heard any of it, scroll down to the bottom of this story and give the podcast segment a listen.
When asked about the new "transfer portal" in the college game in which athletes can transfer to different schools more easily, Taylor expressed an interesting perspective.
"I don't like it at all and neither do many of the many coaches I speak with. We're creating a culture of entitlement and expectation and among the hardest things coaches have to do is de-recruit these kids, these 17 year-olds that have been getting their butts kissed for 3-4 years and have 40,000 Twitter followers and think that the world is owed to them.
The transfer portal was created with good intentions to allow players that are in bad situations to kind of test the water and let it be known that they want to take their talents elsewhere. So allowing players to manage their careers is a good mechanism.
The problem is for a lot of those players, they mismanage their careers. The second things don't go the way they want, the second that they're tested, they hit the eject button. That's a problem in sports, that's a problem in our communities, that's a problem nationally and I think collegiate football and collegiate sports in general needs to really take a look at that and create some perimeters around it.
One of the stories I love the most is Jalen Hurts being beat out by Tua Tagovailoa at Alabama. After the National Championship Game two years ago where Jalen left and Tua came in and threw the game-winning touchdown pass, after the game Jalen Hurts was up in his hotel room talking with his parents in tears. I'm getting tingles telling this story...hands in his face, crying, 'Dad what are we gonna do? Dad what are we gonna do?' And his dad looked at him and said, 'We're gonna fight.'
He stayed on campus, and I can't tell you, of all the things I've seen in sports, watching him come off the bench and re-replace Tua Tagovailoa to lead his team to victory in the way that he did is what makes sports, sports. It's what makes men, men. He hung in there, he got his chance, he was ready and he led his team to victory. It was the most vindicating thing I've ever seen for being able to hang in there, keep showing up and fight through adversity."
The Joe Moore Award is the only accolade in college football to honor a position group. It is named after Joe Moore, widely regarded as one of the best offensive line coaches in college football history, most notably for his work at Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh. Coach Moore sent 52 players on to the NFL, including Bill Fralic, Mark May, Russ Grimm, Jimbo Covert and others.