In 1980, the U.S. Olympic hockey team defeated the mighty Soviets. Two years later, tiny Chaminade beat the University of Virginia and seven-foot-four Ralph Sampson. But those upsets took place on the underdogs home turf. When the Appalachian State Mountaineers played the No. 5 football team in the country on September 1, 2007, they did so before 110,000 screaming Wolverine fans at the Big House in Ann Arbor. The result? Appalachian 34, Michigan 32. This, wrote John Feinstein in the Washington Post, might very well be the all-timer. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy than Appalachian head football coach Jerry Moore. In King of the Mountain, journalist Dick Brown traces Moore's life from his playing days in Texas to his climb through the coaching ranks and his tenure in his adopted home in the North Carolina mountains. Appalachian fans celebrate Moore's three consecutive national championships beginning in 2005, but they may have forgotten the calls for his head just a year earlier. And all those millions who admired Moore's gracious handling of the epic Michigan win are likely unaware that he nearly died one night when his plane was forced to land on a country road during a recruiting trip, or that he gave up coaching in the prime of life, or that he quit a high-paying job to begin his football comeback as an unpaid assistant. Through all the highs and lows, Moore has been sustained by his religious faith and by the love of his family, particularly his wife, Margaret. Appalachian boosters and football fans far and wide will enjoy this intimate look at a coach so down-to-earth that he could talk about his upcoming game with Lenoir-Rhyne while the nation marveled over his win at the Big House, a man more devoted to nurturing young men than amassing football victories.
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