In brilliantly leading Michigan over Ohio State, Sherrone Moore has made himself a hot coaching prospect

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Sherrone Moore is going to be a head coach. This isn’t some hokey conclusion based on Saturday’s result in the hatefest that is The Game.

That was a random proclamation from ultimate Michigan Man turned Missing Man himself, Jim Harbaugh. It was in the middle of summer when the Wolverines coach mentioned that Moore, his offensive coordinator, was among a cluster of assistants who would one day run their own programs.

For Moore, Michigan’s acting head coach during Harbaugh’s three-game Big Ten suspension, it came sooner than expected. Not the way he wanted, perhaps, but right on time.

There will be opinions cussed and discussed from here going forward on how Michigan got to 12-0 and the Big Ten Championship Game for the third straight year. They are discussions that were not even contemplated after Harbaugh and Michigan put Ohio State’s Ryan Day on some sort of hot seat last year in this game.

But it will be hard to brush off what a 37-year-old Kansas native, who played JUCO ball before playing 14 games at Oklahoma, has done to get Michigan to within a game of a third straight College Football Playoff appearance. The Wolverines only need to get past punchless Iowa to again put themselves in position for their first national championship in 26 years.

Moore has enhanced a resume that already included two Joe Moore Awards for coaching the nation’s best offensive line. He ran a team — while calling plays amid a maelstrom of alleged Harbaugh-inflicted off-field issues. This while attempting to get rid of doubt about how Michigan got here.

In the process, Moore has made himself hot in a different kind of way. He might be the nation’s next hot head coaching model.

Michigan beat Ohio State for the third consecutive season, this time 30-24 in the rivalry’s first one-score result in seven years. But before we get to the implications of Day having to trudge back to Columbus, Ohio, carrying the unbearable weight of another loss to The Team Up North, we must discuss why these Wolverines didn’t go South during the ongoing sign-stealing scandal.

Moore is now 4-0 and the nation’s winningest coach (with an asterisk). It’s taken a minute to get there. He was acting coach for one of three games during Harbaugh’s first suspension, leading Michigan against Bowling Green. That after Moore himself was suspended for the season opener against East Carolina by…