CHICAGO -- There was a long time when it had appeared that Michigan football would land quarterback Dante Moore. After all, former Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh had offered Moore when he was in eighth grade. However, with a series of missteps and disastrous quarterback coach hires, Moore had wandering eyes. He committed to Oregon, flipped to UCLA, and then ultimately transferred to Oregon, where he's become a household name in college football.
Though Moore left and has spent his entire college career on the West Coast, his time with some former Michigan football luminaries helped shape him.
Michigan offered Moore all the way back in June 2018, a full five years before his recruiting class. At that time, the Wolverines had some well-known
players wearing winged helmets, including one from the Detroit area who was rated as a five-star atop his positional rankings. And Moore said, at Big Ten media days, that he was an inspiration for him to achieve greatness at a young age.
"Do you know a guy named Donovan Peoples-Jones?" Moore said. "Yeah, so that was someone I grew up watching in high school. It wasn't literally in high school. That was someone that just -- he gave me life. He gave me the 'I can make it out of Detroit.' Of course, he went to my rival school in high school. But, I mean, overall, just seeing that talent make it out of Detroit, you feel like you can do it as well. So, being from Detroit helps you mold you as a person. But, yeah, he just helped me out a lot."
When Moore was offered by the maize and blue, it was his first offer overall. But it wasn't his first exposure to Michigan.
Moore had been working with former Wolverines quarterback Devin Gardner, who had been coaching a group he had called 'Young Go Getters.' He was also on a CE Stars 7-on-7 team, which was former Michigan running back Chris Evans' outfit.
When it came to Gardner, the former Michigan standout also inspired Moore, but in a different way. He was a more hands-on type of leader, who not only showed him the way, but taught him how to be a difference-making quarterback at the next level.
"Devin Gardner, I mean, that was someone that took me under his wing and trained me all my life as a quarterback, especially a quarterback from Detroit, a Black quarterback," Moore said. "And it was just great. I mean, me being able to learn a lot from him, him taking me as family and us just being able to just -- I get to ask him any questions. And it's like when I was younger, just seeing him playing in Japan, he would play in the NFL, all those things. It was just amazing. So, it's him having an impact on my life, and him being the life for me was great as well."
Moore will face off against his former home-state school on November 14, when Oregon hosts Michigan football at Autzen Stadium in Eugene.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Oregon QB Dante Moore finds inspiration in former Michigan football stars
