How $9.80 Created a Literary Balm for Troubled Times: Revisiting Fahrenheit 451

Today, looking around our great yet troubled country, one can’t help but feel the suppressing force of cancel culture. Watch what you say, keep your thoughts to yourself, and be careful who you talk openly to. And for goodness’ sake, don’t convey appreciation for the great works of the past, whether they be historical (Jefferson or Hamilton), philosophical (Aurelius or Rand), literary (Twain or Orwell), economic (Friedman or von Mises) or scientific (Darwin or Columbus). Such carelessness may land you out of a job, expelled from university, rejected from the neighborhood book club, and vilified on social media.

For the few of us that subscribe to this prudent path yet suffer from a genetic flaw that creates an innate resistance to today’s cancel culture and woke police, we can take solace in a handful of literary masterpieces from the 20th century. At the top stands George Orwell’s 1984 (1949). And there is the prescient Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler (1940), who introduced his observations on intellectual and political tyranny.

As great as those two works are, there is a third that serves as the supreme combination of adventurous storytelling, political commentary, and contemporary relevance. It was written in the early 1950s by its author in the basement of the UCLA library on a public typewriter. A dime bought 30 minutes of typewriter time, and the author ended up investing 98 dimes to produce the original manuscript.

The $9.80 book is Ray Bradbury’s 1953 classic, Fahrenheit 451. If you’ve never read it, do yourself a favor and invest the time to do so. If it’s been a while since you read it, revisiting the story in 2021 will provide a stunning and new perspective for these tumultuous times. The story should bother you, as it pertains to crucially important subjects worth being bothered about.

The story revolves around Gus Montag, a fireman in a future society where the job of firemen is not to save homes from burning, but instead to burn books and the structures (and at times, the people) hiding them. The tools of the trade are vehicles and hoses loaded with kerosine and igniters (451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns). The fireman’s credo was best summarized by Montag: “It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”

The fireman’s rules were simple and sequential: answer the alarm quickly, start the fire swiftly, burn everything, report back to the firehouse, and then be alert for other alarms. Books are viewed as loaded guns that must be destroyed to protect people from thinking.

The government and its minions, including the firemen, get to play the censors, judges, and executioners. Instead of being born free and equal under the Constitution, the aim of the police state is now to make everyone equal.

On its surface, Fahrenheit 451 is a dramatic story about how the individual and his free will overcomes oppression in society and government. That alone would make the book must-read. But there are other, just as impactful, themes in Bradbury’s tale. Consider a few ‘hows’:

How media and government feed viewers/citizens shallow content to sedate the mind of the individual. In the book, parlor rooms in homes consist of giant floor-to-ceiling walls covered by video screens that play constant, hollow programming. Sports are offered up as a sedative to keep the masses happy and quiet. Everyone is conditioned to watch and listen, to the point where they stop talking to one another and thinking for themselves. Bradbury was foreshadowing today’s reality shows and giant LED 4k TVs that lower the viewer’s and society’s collective consciousness.
How superficial materialism and ‘keeping up with Joneses’ are unfulfilling and demoralizing to the human spirit. Montag’s wife, Mildred, pines for a fourth wall of TVs in their parlor room, even though it would require a third of Montag’s annual pay. Her addiction to the drivel and her desire for yet another screen does not buy her happiness; she tries (unsuccessfully) to commit suicide by consuming a bottle of sleeping pills.
How government and technology conspire to create an oppressive surveillance state. Family members are encouraged to rat one another out if books are present, akin to bias reporting tools on today’s university campuses for non-sanctioned views and thoughts. The hound is a technological innovation in the book that tracks and kills its prey, mainly individuals marked for elimination by the state. The hound of today can be found in drones, artificial intelligence, and tracking technology. As Montag’s boss and nemesis said, “Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us.”
How the education system is utilized to eradicate thought and debate and replace it with conscripted indoctrination. In the book, school curriculum is shortened, academic discipline is relaxed, and subjects such as philosophy and history are dropped. Children are removed from their home environment as early as possible in life, so that they can develop in the controlled state-sanctioned environment of the public school. Content focuses exclusively on teaching how to press buttons and pulling switches, never on how to think. Looking around at our public education system and colleges today, you get the feeling academia stole the playbook from Bradbury’s world.
How the ‘tyranny of the majority’ will drive an open society without protections for the minority into an oppressive one. Fahrenheit 451 reminds us that calcification to the majority (or, for that matter, the ability of the minority to stamp out thought) is an enemy of truth, the individual, and reason. Today, it is what we call ‘cancel culture,’ except it is now a majority of the minority of elites who decide for the masses what is truth and reason.
How society is broken down into two categories: those who build and those who burn. Montag lived in a society where the makers (builder/thinker/doer) were dulled and overcome by the takers (bureaucrat/thought police/administrator). Today’s administrative state in government, the academic complex, and key special interests are steadily subsuming those who create, enable, and serve free enterprise and value creation. Might we be much closer to Montag’s time than we realize?

Although Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 for America in the 1950s, he succeeded in providing us a piercing reminder of the need to safeguard freedoms in 2021. A wise character in the book, Faber, listed three essential reasons why books are important. First, quality books present imperfections and blemishes that mimic life, at times making books feared. Second, good books extract leisure time to induce the reader to think. And third, great books inspire and catalyze action.

Fahrenheit 451 scores on all three of Faber’s essential reasons. We should be grateful that Ray Bradbury invested 98 dimes in the UCLA library basement and his time to express his passion for literature and individual freedom. The rate of return on that investment is incalculable.

Nick Discusses Global and U.S. Energy Demand with CNBC

Nick joined CNBC on Friday, Oct. 29, to discuss global energy demand and resulting price increases. “It’s supply and demand with a new twist,” says Nick. He points to deferred and deterred investment in pipeline infrastructure as a major factor in gas supply not being able to meet demand.

IPCC: The Religion and the Racket of Climate Change

Let’s perform a quick exercise. Consider the following quotes:

“code red for humanity”
“dangerously close to spiraling out of control”
“the alarm bells are deafening”
“deadly heat waves”
“gargantuan hurricanes”
“unleash disastrous weather”
“people could die just from going outside”
“the world is running out of time”
“Earth could broil”

Now answer the following multiple-choice question. The direct quotes above are from:
(a) The script for a heavily marketed disaster film/horror story
(b) The sermon for an end-of-times religious cult
(c) An article written by energy/environment journalists of a respected global news outlet
(d) All of the above

If you answered (d), there is good news and bad news.

The good news is you are correct. The quotes are from a “news” story issued by Reuters that was timed to amplify the AR6 2021 report from that bureaucratic nest known as the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The article replaces objective journalism with a blend of Hollywood script and modern-day Book of Revelations.

The bad news is that if you are applying to college or interviewing for a job, you are advised to shroud your intelligence and instead feign a veneer of politically correct groupthink. That’s because today when it comes to climate change, the objective mind is subjected to the pincer movement of amped up rhetoric from the church’s high priests and the persecution of the dissenting free thinker.

“Climate Science Integrity” Becomes an Oxymoron

Crucial to progress in science is the willingness of the scientific community to self-audit and to be clinically objective. Self-audit drives not only progress, but also informs of the ethical compass of the scientific community. In the arena of climate science, the religion has subsumed objectivity and the ethical compass is broken.

The integrity of the IPCC and its climate models are massively important to billions of human beings. The results of these dubious endeavors and highly questionable results are not being used for purely academic pursuits; they are being used to drive public policy decisions that impact countless lives. The logic is linear and chilling: flawed model inputs produce mutated predictions, mutated predictions advise wrong-headed policies, and wrong-headed policies erode the human condition.

Setting sound public policy requires the ability to predict outcomes with reasonable accuracy. When models are wired to manufacture desired outcomes or reflect subjective beliefs, a fundamental flaw is created. When the models used to forecast and their creators demonstrate either gross incompetence or an unethical bias, then their views of the future and resulting policy recommendations should be ignored.

Modeling Like its 1999 to Predict 2100 Weather

While the world’s best meteorologists armed with the most sophisticated technology can’t accurately pinpoint the location of a hurricane in a few days without applying a wide cone of uncertainty, the priests in the church of climate state with arrogant certainty how much warmer the planet will be decades in the future, to the tenth of a degree. Such obvious naiveite should be ridiculed by the scientific community, but it won’t be.

And it gets worse when you dig into the details inside these black box climate models.

For decades, the UN’s IPCC and the models it utilized assume for key scenarios that coal demand and consumption would grow drastically. In fact, for years the IPCC models assumed coal would become the top energy source for cars – surpassing oil and electric vehicles.

The infamous RCP8.5 scenario from earlier IPCC reports, which sets the stage for many of these IPCC scenarios and global warming predictions, assumes a 600% increase in global coal consumption per capita by 2100. Such an assumption is ridiculous, considering realities such as the natural gas shale revolution and energy efficiency innovations. Worse yet, the world has demonstrated the absurdity of a 600% increase in coal consumption, with coal demand peaking and, in developed nations like the US, declining precipitously over the past 15 years.

And IPCC’s recent AR6 report embraced a “shared socio-economic pathways” (that’s what technocrats now call scenarios) case that assumes even higher fossil fuel emissions than the prior RCP8.5 scenario. This laughable new scenario, labeled SSP5-8.5, has no basis in the reality of current energy markets and predicts future CO2 emissions from energy that blow past the prior IPCC scenario of RCP8.5, as well as projections from the IEA, BP, and Exxon.

The IPCC refuses to provide relative probabilities for each of its scenarios. But guess which case IPCC references the most when discussing climate change consequences? That’s right, the one that is the fiction bordering on the fantasy: SSP5-8.5.

Why would such an obvious flawed assumption on coal consumption be allowed to propagate through these IPCC scenarios year after year and report after report? Because without a massive increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration from burning more and more coal, the model won’t spit out a desired spike in future global temperatures. No boiling planet, no imminent Armageddon (Code Red!) and salvation via a call to action (Climate Action Now!). The religion is exposed, and the racket vanishes.

Unpacking the Climate Change Issue

Now, I’ve written extensively on the issue of climate change, taking the path of data-grounded, science-based reality (https://nickdeiuliis.com/news/a-rational-persons-guide-to-climate-change/). So, before you shout ‘denier’ and stone me with lumps of coal, consider I’ve gone on record acknowledging that climate change has been a reality for millions of years and that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has increased since the advent of the Industrial Revolution from human activity. Both are undeniable facts.

There are three other undeniable facts, however.

First, those rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are still trace amounts. All the CO2 emitted from industrial human activity over the past couple of hundred years took CO2 from just over 0.02% to roughly 0.04% of the atmosphere.

Using parts-per-million instead of percent and quoting a “doubling” of atmospheric CO2 (from 200 ppm to 400 ppm) may sound more ominous and impressive. But it is the same as 0.02% to 0.04%: still trace levels, and still inconsequential in the grand, complex scheme of global climate.

Second, the ability, accuracy, and precision of climate models and the so-called scientists who construct them have been horrendous.

Perhaps gross inaccuracy with predicting climate twenty years from now is not surprising, considering meteorologists can’t predict next week’s weather with certainty. At a minimum, these climate scientists (a term some may argue is self-contradicting) should be fired for incompetence and their models should be scrapped. The models, which are endlessly refined year after year, badly miss predictions and can’t even accurately predict prior temperatures when tested in a backward-looking fashion. That we continue to fund them with billions in taxpayer dollars and listen to them when developing public policy is societal self-inflicted ignorance.

Third, and most important, every activity and endeavor in society and the economy has a significant carbon footprint across its life cycle. That holds true for wind power, solar power, food consumption, public transportation, the hydrogen economy, and social media.

Which means CO2 levels will continue to rise no matter what we embrace: combustion engines or electric vehicles, solar or natural gas power, in person or remote work, manufacturing or the idea economy. The only way to attain a zero-carbon society is to shutter the economy and eradicate quality of life. There is no magic technology or whiz-bang invention that will change that fact. Any representation to the contrary is a fraud on science.

The Religion and the Racket

Bureaucrats in government (and global institutions like the UN), academics engaged in so-called climate research, and media prostituting for clicks and social media follows have spent years eroding the science and constructing in its place a belief-based religion. Pledge your allegiance to the church of climate or be cast out and ostracized by your colleagues, neighbors, friends, and family.

The religion is then used to initiate the racket: justifying and procuring endless funding and attention, where the high priests engage in a lucrative scheme that yields expanding funding, ballooning staffs, new research labs, a wider audience, and, most important of all, influence on public policy and personal decision making (aka power).

Unfortunately, while this elite climate syndicate enjoys the fruits of their racket measured in billions of dollars, it ends up being quite the non-virtuous circle for the rest of us who must pay the monetary bill and the societal price. We are being subjected to an endless loop of elitist digital media-preachers telling us what to do and where to send our money so that we may be saved (the spirit of Jim Bakker’s 700 Club rises again).

That’s how you end up with elite journalists, government officials, and academics from well-respected organizations spewing baseless hysteria like the trashy quotes above. The authors should be ashamed, for what they created is not objective and is not representative of ethical journalism. Instead, it is blatant marketing and advocacy for a complex issue they know little about. The organization they work for should reconsider its self-prescribed label of “news provider.”

The legitimate Code Red for humanity is that the very stakeholders society relies upon to protect it from harmful schemes—government, academia, and media—are the perpetrators of this scheme.

To learn more about the IPCC models and their flaws, give a read to How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality by Roger Pielke Jr. and Justin Richie

Hilton Head Island Reflections and Observations

Our family recently wrapped-up that American summertime ritual of the week-long gathering at a coastal sandbar by the ocean. For my clan, the location of choice for some time has been Hilton Head Island, specifically on the southern end in the Sea Pines community.

In the interests of fair disclosure: I am not a golfer, I spend my days in places like these trying to avoid direct sun, and I will tire of a pool or beach within half an hour. So, in many respects, the week of summer seaside fun is not the place for me. But if the kids are happy, everyone is together, and the food is good, I am all in.

Plus, as a bonus, a week at Hilton Head offers enjoyable and entertaining pursuits for me; they are just unconventional to most beach vacationers. I enjoy observing, contemplating what I see, and then expressing my thoughts through writing. The summer of 2021 and Hilton Head combined to offer up a bevy of observations.

Observation #1: Humans Taming Nature Brings Good Tidings

The first thing that always strikes me about the island is how unforgiving and unusable the place would be without human ingenuity unleashing technology to tame the environment. The place in its natural state is a humid, hot, swampy, stormy, insect-infested ecosystem that makes quick work of the weak, structures, and order. But you walk Hilton Head’s streets and ride its trails, and all you see is beauty: in the manicured lawns, impressive homes, sculpted trees, and carefully designed water features.

The irony that strikes the observer is that those who are drawn to Hilton Head Island view the natural beauty of the place as the primary attraction. Yet a simple and superficial examination betrays a carefully created and cultivated environment that retained the best that nature had to offer (local horticulture), removed the problematic aspects of nature (standing, putrid water), and insulated from the uncontrollable aspects (weather).

Looking around the island, you see the human condition rising above what nature dealt and creating something superior. That makes people happy, and me smile.

Observation #2: Without Carbon, No One Would Be Here
Hilton Head Island’s existence, and that of all tropical locales, depends on carbon. It’s a simple truth: no carbon, no Hilton Head Island.

Why? Well, first off, one could not travel from whatever northern or midwestern city serves as home. And consider the fact that just about everything consumed on the island must be grown, processed, and manufactured somewhere else. All of that requires carbon-based energy, including what it takes to transport the goods to the island.

The electricity that powers the air conditioners 24 hours a day in the summer is largely carbon-based and natural gas-fired. You would not want a wind- or solar-based power grid running climate control in the Carolina Low Country. It would mean stifling indoor temperatures, to the point where you’d be better off staying home up north.

If there is a zero-carbon world awaiting us, the last place you’d want to own real estate or spend a summer week is at a place like Hilton Head. I suspect many northeasterners who vacation down south are oblivious to such realities. Let’s hope they don’t awaken to the reality the hard way, via nonsensical policies.

Observation #3: How to Differentiate Between the 10%, the 1%, and the 0.1%

A place like Sea Pines on Hilton Head provides a quick and easy way to instantly differentiate between the 10% well to do, the 1% rich, and 0.1% ultra-wealthy. Just look at the real estate and who is there. Here is a quick breakdown:

If someone is renting a house in Sea Pines during peak summer season, chances are they are doing well and fall within the upper 10% of the economic crust. Weekly rates on the southern end of the island can run as high as $14,000 per week, depending on the size of the home and its proximity to the ocean. Demand is high; if you want to secure your house for your week, you better commit early (in many instances you need to commit the prior year).
Now, if someone owns the home in Sea Pines and rents it out during peak season, you are likely dealing with someone in the upper 1% of the wealth spectrum. Basically, the top 1% is the landlord for the top 10% weekly tenants in places like Hilton Head. Surprisingly, many homeowners in this group don’t seem to care much about the physical condition of the home; for some the home is nothing more than a revenue generator that can be enjoyed for free in offseason.
Then there is the 0.1% at the tippy-top of the money ladder who own the impressive estate down that is unoccupied most of summer. These are the super wealthy that don’t rent their residences out because, well, they don’t need to. Undoubtedly, the estate here is one of a number they own. So instead of heading down here in summer when its peak season, hot, and busy, they come down in the offseason to escape New York, Boston, or some other large northern city winter.

Observation #4: The Weekly Collision of Doers and Slackers

Hilton Head is typical of many seaside resort communities by offering a stark contrast when it comes to the those on the island any weekday in the summer. There are two distinct groups: those who are on vacation and do nothing but engage in various forms of relaxation and those who are intensely working to maintain, serve, or build the economic ecosystem that is the resort.

It’s always been weird for me when vacationing at these types of locales. Families on bikes, eating out, laying on the beach, and sleeping late. Versus dedicated workers building houses, maintaining lawns, running restaurants, and working 50+ hours per week. One group riding bikes and driving SUVs. The other driving pickups and vans. Both groups going about their day as if the other group is invisible.

I like the vibe of economic activity; doers showing up every day and getting it done. Earning income, providing for their families, and building a life. The local economy in the Low Country is the free market working to create value across the economic spectrum. The free exchanging of value between those who desire leisure and those who provide it. At least for the week, until the vacationers return to their jobs; creating, enabling, and serving to create value.

Observation #5: How the Drive Down and Back Covers the Spectrum of Government

The drive from Pennsylvania to South Carolina offers the opportunity to see how different states approach the role of government and the taxpayer. Toll roads serve as a great illustration.

In Pennsylvania, once a toll road is created, it lives on in eternity. And the cost of the toll continues to go up. It doesn’t matter if the initial justification was to pay for a discrete infrastructure project and now the project is paid off. It doesn’t matter if the tolls are egregious. It doesn’t matter if the road is poorly maintained. The tolls in Pennsylvania live on year after year, dollar after dollar, and mile after mile.

This is not cheap. A round trip on the Pennsylvania Turnpike between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg (spanning about 2/3 of the state’s length) will run you just under $100. Drivers were hit with yet another rate increase in 2021. And the PA Turnpike had the dubious distinction of being rated the most expensive toll road in the world. One may wonder where all that toll money ends up.

The bureaucrat’s justification for the driver extortion is to fund statewide road maintenance, yet the Keystone State’s road system remains in overall poor condition year after year. Instead, the answer, of course, is to primarily feed the bureaucracy of government and its affiliates like the public unions. In Pennsylvania, government only grows, which means tolls only rise while the condition of the roads degrade. And the number of roads that will require toll payment within the Keystone State is increasing.

North Carolina’s abuse of taxpayers and drivers is not as bad as Pennsylvania, but it is getting there. The major highways into and out of Charlotte are now split between toll express lanes and normal lanes. That means traffic congestion is self-inflicted by government on those drivers not willing to be extorted; the toll lanes are wide open and the normal lanes are clogged in traffic jams most hours of the day. Government creates the congestion to grow its revenue base, drivers pay the price directly (through the toll or longer commute times) and the economy pays the price indirectly through lost productivity.

South Carolina is a different story. The Palmetto State has a law that states once a toll road pays off its project financing, the toll booths must come down and the road becomes free and open access. That’s exactly what happened recently on Hilton Head with the Cross Island Parkway: once its final bond payment was paid, access became free and the toll booths will come down.

The drive to and from this year’s vacation illustrates the difference between government serving the people and the people serving government. The former makes you feel relevant while the latter makes you feel used.

Observation #6: Doesn’t Look Like Climate Change is a Top Concern

Up and down the island, you see a building boom. The few remaining vacant lots being staked out for massive, new homes. Older homes are being bought, torn down, and replaced with new houses having three times as much square footage as the predecessors. The closer to the water, the better.

Island real estate values seem to go only in one direction: up. The Fed’s free money policy inflates and pumps real estate values to bubble levels. Buy it, build it, remodel it, rent it, flip it. Repeat over and over (at least until the music stops).

The building boom and dizzying real estate property price increases tell you that no one believes the island is about to be submerged under rising ocean levels. Yes, hurricanes will inevitably hit the island periodically. But building codes and a few rational design features on the homes will make them quite resilient to withstand all but the most severe of storms.

The community of Hilton Head, along with so many other coastal destinations, figured out that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels made its tourism economy possible. Whatever challenges climate may serve up should be manageable over time. Permanent evacuation of the island and resettling to higher ground is not going to be necessary anytime soon. Perhaps the UN’s IPCC bureaucrats should take note.

Conclusion

Human ingenuity, technological innovation, and the free market economy make places like Hilton Head Island possible. These wonderous drivers make the useless and inhospitable valuable and inviting. The more we do to protect these quality of life catalysts, the better chance our kids and grandchildren will enjoy their fruits for decades to come.

The Unsung Icon of Western Pennsylvania Football Royalty

Western Pennsylvania is steeped in football tradition. The cradle of quarterback legends Joe Namath, George Blanda, John Unitas, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, and Jim Kelly. Beyond marquee QBs, the region I call home could fill Canton with its own dedicated wing of current and future members: Tony Dorsett, Curtis Martin, Mike Ditka, Russ Grimm, Jimbo Covert, Bill Fralic, Aaron Donald, Jack Ham, Sean Lee, Joe Schmidt, and Ty Law to name a few. We’ve enjoyed a pro team with six Lombardi’s and two collegiate teams with multiple national titles.

The stacked legacy and legendary names of western Pennsylvania football make it easy to gloss over one of the most impactful native sons of the sport. In the region’s coaching tree, there sits a giant who enjoys both icon status among the football elite and unsung status across the general fan base. No offense to Cowher and Ditka, but the most accomplished football coach from western PA is a position coach who became the godfather of offensive lineman. He’s the greatest name in the region’s football history that you probably never heard of: Joe Moore.

Coach Moore’s Story

Coach Moore is an exemplar of western Pennsylvania. He was raised during the Depression in Pittsburgh’s Bloomfield neighborhood and married a Rankin girl. He started coaching high school football in upstate New York, moved on to Towanda and Erie in Pennsylvania, and then became the head coach at Upper Saint Clair (USC) high school in suburban Pittsburgh in the early 1970s.

Coach Moore built a successful program at USC and set the stage there for his successor, Jim Render, who became the winningest football coach in Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL) history. Moore’s defensive captain during his first year at USC was a kid by the name of Kirk Ferentz, who went on to great things at Iowa, becoming its winningest coach and today stands as the longest-tenured head coach at a single FBS program.

Moore’s legendary collegiate coaching career started at the University of Pittsburgh in 1977, where as part of Jackie Sherrill’s staff he led an epic nine-year run of unprecedented talent development of offensive linemen. The names he nurtured to greatness at Pitt are a generational who’s-who of the O-line: Bill Fralic, Mark May, Russ Grimm, Emil Boures, and Jimbo Covert.

After Pitt, Coach Moore spent two years coaching the offensive line at Temple, and then in 1988 began a nine-year run at Notre Dame. Over those nine years for the Irish he sent all but two of his starting linemen to the NFL. One of the most articulate and passionate ambassadors to the Coach Moore legacy through the years has been Notre Dame two-time All-American Aaron Taylor. Coach Moore’s coaching tree bloomed from his tenure with the Irish: Andy Heck was a player for Moore at Notre Dame who went on to a lengthy NFL career as a player and won a Super Bowl as the O-line coach for the Kansas City Chiefs.

Joe Moore was a direct, to-the-point man. He was an intimidator, but in a good way. There were zero airs and graces about him; he simply oozed western PA. He had the perfect personality and style for instilling greatness and realizing raw potential with rough, unpolished talent. His style was optimally suited to develop boys into men.

One of his most famous sayings captured his philosophy of linemen with, “there is no greater feeling in life than moving a man from Point A to Point B, against his will.” He loved teaching the fundamentals and was a master at manipulating players mentally to motivate and prepare them for competition.

As he would often say, those around him would love him at times, hate him at times, but kill for him all the time. His linemen through the years may have had Jackie Sherrill or Lou Holtz as their head coach, but they all played for Joe Moore.

The Joe Moore Legacy

Sadly, we lost Joe Moore much too early in 2003. Although the man may be gone, his memory lives larger than ever. His memory is evident both publicly and privately.

Coach Moore’s public memory is embodied in the Joe Moore Award (JMA). The JMA is awarded annually to the best collegiate football offensive line unit. The award is presented by the Joe Moore Foundation for Teamwork and recognizes the toughest, most physical offensive line in the country. The JMA is the only major college football award to honor a unit or group, not an individual.

Another visible aspect of Moore’s legacy is the Joe Moore O-Line Camp, held every summer in suburban Pittsburgh. The camp provides high school players the chance to be instructed in the craft by an impressive list of former Joe Moore players, headed by NFL Hall of Famer Russ Grimm. The star-studded coaches who regularly attend the camp are testament to the lasting impact their coach had on them decades ago in college.

However, Coach Moore’s most important legacy is one that escapes public notice: his family. The Moore’s raised three boys in suburban Pittsburgh, and today the extended family has grown to include the coach’s grandchildren. I know the extended family well; they are close friends. I can tell you the best part of the Joe Moore legacy is that his grandchildren are the type of individuals you would want to live next door to, befriend, or have your young kids emulate.

In his chosen profession, Joe Moore achieved greatness. In the endeavor of his family, Joe Moore exceeded greatness. I hope we are all as fortunate.

Learn More About Moore
View a video tribute to Joe Moore here.
Read about the Joe Moore Award here.
Follow the Joe Moore O-Line Camp on Twitter: @JM_OLine_Camp.