Former University of Michigan coach Sherrone Moore was sentenced to 18 months of probation this month after a relationship with Paige Shiver that ended with his firing and a trespassing plea. Moore, who pleaded no contest to trespassing and malicious use of a telecommunications device, faced a felony home invasion charge that was dropped under the deal.
Shiver said the nearly four-year relationship began as consensual and later made her feel trapped. She said Moore told her he was in a loveless marriage and would soon divorce his wife, then threatened suicide or begged her not to leave when she tried to end it. “He had complete control over me, over my emotions, over my career, and he knew that, and he used it against me,” Shiver said.
The relationship started in January 2022, after Shiver joined the football program as an intern in October 2021. By 2024, she had been promoted to Moore’s executive assistant when he became head coach, and she said senior coaches sometimes told her to console him when he was upset, including during game halftimes. Shiver said the arrangement was an open secret inside the athletics department, and the imbalance between a head coach and a direct report now sits at the center of why the school moved so fast.
University officials said they terminated Moore promptly after discovering an undisclosed workplace relationship with a direct report, saying his conduct violated university policy. University President Domenico Grasso said in December the school was investigating the situation to uncover additional germane and material information and assess whether other misconduct may have been involved. That inquiry, along with the plea deal, helped close the public chapter on a scandal that was already roiling the program.
The facts of Dec. 10 added the sharpest edge. Police said Moore entered Shiver’s apartment the same day he was fired, blamed her for his dismissal and threatened to kill himself with butter knives. Shiver said she feared for her life and repeatedly asked him to leave, then received texts reading “I hate you” and “My blood is on your hands” after the incident. Ellen Michaels said, “Sherrone Moore has closed this chapter.”
What remains is not whether the case is over. It is whether Michigan’s review found every piece of misconduct tied to Moore, or whether the probe was only the first public stop in a wider fallout from a relationship that stretched from October 2021 to this month and left one former coach under probation and one former assistant describing years of control.
