Idaho State All-American kick returner and tailback Tavoy Moore was dismissed from the football team after an incident during practice Thursday morning.
ISU Athletic Director Jeff Tingey confirmed he made the decision after head coach Mike Kramer recommended Moore be removed from the squad.
“For the most part it was for conduct detrimental to the team,” Tingey said. “It was a team decision and I support that.” He added the dismissal was the result of a “combination of events.”
Moore disputes that, saying it was a single incident that escalated during Thursday’s practice.
“It just happened so fast,” Moore said. “He (Kramer) was saying that if anybody dropped a pass or did something wrong, they would have to get off the field. On a kick off return, I dropped the ball. I went off the field, but then he told me to get in the locker room.”
According to Moore, after practice ended other players began telling him he was going to be suspended one game for dropping the ball. That’s when the incident escalated.
“I was saying that I can’t play for someone like him,” Moore said about Kramer. “The way he throws his players under the bus—you’ve seen it in the media. He’s supposed to keep things like that confidential. I can’t play for someone like that.”
After Saturday’s 33-0 loss to Montana at home, Kramer was critical of Moore. “We have guys lined up wrong and our debonair tailback, who's supposed to be a really good player, frizzled and melted himself off the field today,” Kramer said.
“He speaks down on his players when they play bad,” Moore said. “That’s supposed to be confidential. Nobody is perfect.”
Moore said when he told an assistant coach after practice Thursday that he didn’t want “to play for someone like that” the assistant told him to talk to Kramer. Moore said he then talked to the head coach, who told him he was being dismissed from the team.
“What I did wasn’t conduct detrimental to the team," Moore said. "It was supposed to be something between me and the coach.”
For Moore, it was a buildup of frustration that led to his desire to not play for the Bengals.
“All season I have been being put under the bus,” Moore said. “Everyone has when they do something wrong. I was being made into a one-dimensional player. The offense is great, but I don’t feel like I was being utilized. Everyone knows what I did the year before and I wasn’t being used effectively.”
Moore added that the terminology used to describe his dismissal is inaccurate.
“Conduct detrimental to the team. I didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Conduct detrimental to the team is such a broad term. People think it could be anything, like drugs, but it wasn’t.”
Kramer could not be reached for comment on Thursday. A press release from ISU's sports information department said that “Tavoy Moore has been dismissed from the football team for conduct unbecoming of a member of the Idaho State football program. Coach Mike Kramer will have no further comment on the issue.”
Because he is still on scholarship for the rest of the year, Moore plans on staying in school and finishing his degree.
ISU seniors J.T. Albers, a linebacker, and Kelvin Miller, a defensive back, are in full support of their coach and his decision.
“I think the whole team is backing up Kramer,” Miller said. “Right now we’re not sure what’s going on with Tavoy, but we’re in support of what the coaching staff does. They have the team’s best interest in mind.”
“There’s full support for Coach Kramer,” Albers said. “There’s really no reason to doubt what the coaching staff or Coach Kramer are doing.”
The dismissal of Moore leaves the Bengals short-handed at running back. The team plans to use freshman Aaron Prier and sophomore Jarrod Daniels in the backfield at Weber State on Saturday, where ISU will face its former head coach John Zamberlin.
Zamberlin is currently an assistant coach for the Wildcats after being fired by ISU last season.
(22) comments
crappy fans...like jcole33
Crappy coachs, crappy teams, crappy players. That will always be the case for ISU football.
Another dark day at ISU football. I feel this Coach Kramer could have been one of the great coach's in ISU history but now from what I have seen Coach Kramer is not the savior he was made out to be in the press.
This has been one of the worst offensive passing attacks ever at ISU and all the press was it was going to light the Dome on fire and no running game at all. Everyone in the Dome could see the players had been over coached, they was scared to death to do anything. When a coach yells at players the way Kramer did and calls them names the way he did it gets in their minds. I did not see Montana's coaches acting like Kramer was and their fans said so in our letter to the editor, they saw what he was doing.
ISU will get a big time thumping in Ogden and it's all on Kramer.
Interesting how on this board and on the Bengal Board, Kramer is regarded as such a gutsy coach and a great guy with spine. Well, after listening to his big talk and coutnry club BS since the WSU game, the jury is out on him for me. He's thrown Yost under the bus and Moore and others - in the press and on his weekly show from Chili's. If that's his idea of motivation, hmmmm. Who knows what really went on in the locker room or on the field?
What a laughing and jocular guy with a big mouth - maybe a big bag of wind would be a better description. Just watch your back.
The SI article on the mess he had at Montana State with drug running players and murder suspects is well worth reading.
We'll see what transpires. Save that drink of Kool-aid for me for later on down the line.
Joker
No I get it straight from the horses's mouth--KPVI 6
And kramer himself.
Don't get me wrong. I like Kramer, I even liked Zamberlin.
But I turned on Zamberlin when he dismissed Isaaih Burel. And we never found out why.
hey is it written somewhere that I am supposed to like it when my STAR player
is axed for dropping a ball.
These at random game suspensions that Kramer is covering over this is not the first time, no body in there right mind would like.
Whatever Kramer thinks it is he is doing ---It AIN"T working.
And I'll give you another insight Kramer dog---Kramer is NOT a bigger man
on the Idaho State Football Team that Tavoy Moore.
Kramer is just one of Tigey's paid hirelings---Tavoy Moore is an All-American
That is something this squad doesn't see very often.
maggie6, let me guess. You're the type who gets all of his "news" from talk radio AND automatically assumes it's fact and true without question?
You jokers are beginning to crack me up with your comments.
This is D1 Football. This is not middle school. These are professed atheletes by any standards, if there is no give and take well guess who loses.
Kramer threatened Yost with pulling him out and putting in Arias right on TV.
Well Yost cried like he was supposed to and played the worst game in idaho State for fifteen years.
I think Kramer's tactics are those of a madman with the roof falling in on him.
And you can bet this dumb move did not endear him to a lot of recruits who may have even thought about joining a loser squad like Idaho State Football.
A one game suspension for dropping a football on a punt return when <oore is not supposed to be returning punts anymore anyway according to Kramer when he salmmed Moore on TV Monday.
It all smells like dirty fish and scapegoating. Who is next in the Hitler-Stalin Kramer era?
Kramer is simply saying, either play up to my expectations or go do something else. Kramer is demanding a higher performance level then we have seen in the past; thank goodness. Players will either except Kramer's style and performance expectations or rebel. I have no problem with Kramer's actions, instead I applaud them.
After both reading and watching Tavoy speak on the matter, I have to admit, all I could think of was Allen Iverson's infamous rant - "We're talking about practice!"
Granted, we don't know the other side of the story. I don't really care to, either. I do know that a coach doesn't suspend a player for just dropping a punt return unless there are some other things at play (i.e. attitude, mouth, disrespect). Coaches all have different philosophies and techniques in how they deal with players. Nobody complained when Newlee was the women's coach and ran the women to death when they missed a free throw during practice. They stepped up and became one of the better free throw shooting teams in the nation.
It looks like Kramer isn't letting anybody rest on their laurels from years gone by. He's getting rid of 11 individuals on each side of the ball and instead creating ONE TEAM!
No offense to Tavoy but it's not throwing players under the bus it's called holding players accountable for their play. I don't recall Kramer ever saying that one individual lost a game this year. As for the 4th and 1 get over Kramer said he was wrong and should have gone for it. So get over it. This is only Kramer's first year but yet everyone was okay with giving Zamberlin the years he had and he won how many games especailly Maggie 6 aka tigersblood?? Ummm let me think not very many. So how bout we give Kramer a chance and put in his system with players he recruits. You can't seriously sit back and say this team has not improved this year. There have been vast improvements all around.
After watching Saturday's game it was quite obvious to me that Tavoy did not have the game in his head, he was clearly somewhere else in his thinking. I feel that Coach K sent a clear and good message to the entire team. Does not matter who you are on this team, if you do not prepare yourself than pack your bags. I feel this decision will 'wake up' the team
Coaches that throw their players under the bus in public need some serious soul searching. Hurry up offenses dont waste 20 seconds on the play clock to run a play. 4 and 1, end of the game, need a score and you punt. Come on, the ISU fans deserve a much better explanation....
Well, I don't like this one bit. Tavoy Moore has been an exemplary athelete.
Kramer is obviously on a ego roll. This karma is going to roll back on Idaho
State. It is obvious from the last three games that the Kramer scheme for the
passing offense is doomed to failure. The Montana game was the worst game played by an Idaho State offense since 1997.
I have critisized Kramer for his bad decesions. One was the 4 and 1 against Portland.
This decesion takes the cake. Who does Kramer think he is? He has got this town pumped with baloney. And he is no Savior of anything. He may have some of the
players licking his shoes. Kramer overlooks one important factor--that is the ISU
fan base that he is trying to build.
Like it or not the 9000 fans that came to Holt for the Montana game came to see
Tavoy Moore play again. And Moore is right. Kramer has slambaked many of the
players to the press to try and overcome his big offense passing dreams that
aren't worth the paper they are printed on.
The Weber game is going to be a squash.
Crewzzer, what's more of a waste, spending a couple million on sports or spending tens of million like some other football programs in the state? No, I think ISU has the right approach to college athletics.
I couldn't agree more with mch8545! what if we, as a university altered the black hole paradigm of sport-related academic contributions and, instead, encouraged our alumni to pledge money with specificity in beneficiaries.
We have utterly wasted a great deal of money on this football team, from the six figure salaries of coaches and athletic directors to hundreds of thousands of lost money for full ride athletic scholarships. If alumni donors were more strongly urged by our Development, Foundation, and Alumni entities to contribute to academic programs that the donors themselves may have attended, instead of an expensive and failing football program, we would all be better off.
As it stands, our university is placing academic support and program funding on the backs of students and faculty in the effort to become the "preeminant research university in Idaho " while flushing away scores of thousands of donated dollars on an expensive and failed sports program. Let's get rational.
Moore is done. He played both seasons in JC, all in 2008 and 8 games in 2009.
It's a sad situation all the way around. I hope for Moore's sake, he gets his degree and moves onward and upward. Maybe he can run some indoor and outdoor track for ISU while he finishes up.
In all honesty, he just hasn't made the impact this year as he did last. He was injured, still seemed rusty upon his return, put ISU in some bad situations with punt returns, and found that teams haven't kicked off to him in the games he has played.
I admire Kramer for making this decision. There are many who will jump to conclusions without knowing either side. I trust a coach, whose job performance is measured by success on and off the field, isn't going to kick a star player off the team just "because."
The point is folks, not matter what idaho State does, this is a sad sad day.
I am only thinking of Senior day when Moore should have drawn some of the loudest cheers along with AJ and the rest, he will not be there to merit the applause he so richly deserves for making ISU Football a high point when it was a low ebb.
Moore's JC career was only one year the way i understood it when he was recruited. He was out a year with an injury.
The injury this year was replica of that injury.
The question this year as far as I see it is up in the air. He still may have a year at least.
Maybe just maybe, after years of epic defeats ISU should chuck the Football and spend the money on a better and more competetive University. The Football team is a embarrasment. [sad]
Moore is out of eligiblity -- he played two years in JC and this is his second season at the 1-AA level. You get five years to play four seasons, so he's done.
It is probably a lot more complicated than it appears.
Moore has been running at half steam so who knows what is going on.
My thoughts are that Tavoy still has eligibility particularly since he was dismissed and
did not quit the team. The other factor was that he was out in JC so he could have up to 2 yrs possibly. There are a few fifth year seniors palying and even some Graduate students have played who had eligibility.
This may come back to haunt ISU if Moore opps to go to Weber with Zamberlin
or Collins at Northern Colorado. I bet either the Wildcats or the Bears would welcome him with open arms and consider it a gift from above to have him.
I don't see Moore as a quiter.
Wow, huge surprise! That decision by Kramer took guts. To dismiss a star player can not be an easy decision but it really comes down to what is best for the team and long term discipline. Many coaches would have walked away from making this tough decision--glad to see Kramer stick to his beliefs.
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