His primary job is to school those athletes in his charge in the finer arts of route-running and pass-catching and, thus, chains-moving and touchdown-scoring. But Rob Moore, Syracuse University’s wide receivers coach, understands that his duties also include providing more than just football guidance.
Indeed, his task at SU is to make certain that his guys understand that good hands don’t necessarily make for good teammates . . . for good citizens . . . for good people.
Always a tough gig, mentoring becomes even more difficult when the mentees -- in Moore’s case, the Orange wideouts -- can look to the NFL and see . . . well, clowns.
Dez Bryant . . . Randy Moss . . . Chad Johnson . . . Terrell Owens. You get the drift.
“You know, when I came up in the league, the veterans really straightened the young players out,” said Moore, who played 10 seasons (1990-’99) for the New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals. “I was lucky. I had a great mentor in Freeman McNeil. He took me under his wing and taught me how to be a pro. The veterans took care of the young guys. I don’t think you have much of that today.
“The old veterans used to take pride in that. Now, with the way the collective bargaining agreement is set up, the NFL is a young man’s league. And I don’t think those guys are ready to help some of the (even) younger guys out. So, they let them shoot themselves in the foot, which means they’ll get to play a little bit longer.”
There may not be a direct connection to the misbehavior of certain NFL scalawags and impressionable college players, but it takes no great leap to imagine that the Bryants and Mosses and Johnsons and Owenses -- each somewhere between diva and cad -- do have their influence. And Moore thinks they’ve been aided and abetted by technology.
“The social media is really to blame for a lot of that,” he said. “You can act crazy and millions of people see it, and you become a celebrity. You get a TV show and all of those things. I think social media promotes that kind of behavior. There still are certain guys who carry themselves like pros and really do a great job of carrying the torch in the NFL and what the league really represents. But I think when you have the social media and you have guys who enjoy it a little too much, that’s what you get.”
Moore is in his third year on Doug Marrone’s staff and remains pretty much what he was as a star Syracuse receiver in 1987, ’88 and ’89 (during which he caught 106 passes for 2,122 yards and scored 22 touchdowns) and as a Pro Bowler with both the Jets (’94) and the Cardinals (’97). That is, a man with a certain dignity.
Oh, and with clear expectations, embedded in him by his parents, on how one should conduct one’s self.
“I do think the majority of these guys today get it,” said Moore, who'll be 44 at the end of the month. “But there are some who don’t. If I behaved like them, my mom would have shot me and my dad would probably have put his size-12 where nobody could see it. At the end of the day, at least when I played, I was always conscious about how my family would be represented. I think sometimes guys lose sight of that.”
His challenge is to see that the Orange wideouts don't.
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