The NFL’s oldest assistant coach doesn’t sound like he’s in any hurry to retire.
Tom Moore, the Buccaneers’ 84-year-old offensive consultant, is receiving the Award of Excellence at the Pro Football Hall of Fame this week, but he says that’s not any indication that his career is at its end.
“There’s got to be some guardian angels who have watched over me,” Moore told Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “People don’t understand what it’s like when you’re 84 unless you’ve been 84 and able to get up and have a job to go to work. They don’t understand how great a feeling that is. . . . I’ve been very lucky.”
Moore, whose coaching career started as a graduate assistant at Iowa in 1961, says coaching football is what he always wanted to do.
“I’m 84 and I’m still doing exactly what I want to do,” Moore said. “And I see some guys who get in a hurry, they do this and all of a sudden at 47 they’re selling Mutual of Omaha [insurance]. Coaches have been so instrumental in my life that I thought it was such an honorable profession so maybe I could be that to some other people. Without this, I don’t know what my life would’ve been.”
