ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Being a college sports fan in 2026 means living with a degree of cognitive dissonance. Even by those standards, Michigan fans have had a lot to process in the past six months.
Michigan saw its football program dragged through the mud for several weeks in December. In April, the school had a parade through the streets of Ann Arbor to celebrate a men’s basketball national championship. A few days later, a judge sentenced former football coach Sherrone Moore to 18 months’ probation after he pleaded no contest to a pair of misdemeanors. Good luck trying to put a neat bow around all of that.
This era of Michigan sports will be remembered for its great successes (national championships in football and basketball) and its NCAA investigations (from Connor Stalions to recruiting during the pandemic) and its scandals (Moore’s inappropriate relationship with a staff member). Without one side or the other, it would be much easier to present an unconflicted view of Warde Manuel’s decade as Michigan’s athletic director.
Manuel has overseen some high highs and some low lows. The juxtaposition was on display when President Domenico Grasso introduced Manuel as “the best athletic director in the United States of America” at Michigan’s national championship rally, all while the school was spending millions to investigate the culture and practices of its athletic department.
In the afterglow of the celebration, Manuel defended Michigan’s culture by pointing to the school’s success in men’s and women’s basketball, ice hockey and other sports. He also referenced the “99.9 percent of people” in the athletic department who are “working to do things the right way.”
“You can’t do what we’ve done if people want to say you have a bad culture,” Manuel said. “You can’t do it. You just can’t have that level of success across the board. We have great people here. That’s what gives me great happiness to be here as athletic director.”
Manuel could be right, but if that 99.9 percent doesn’t include the head football coach, it’s going to reflect poorly on the entire department. That’s what happened with Moore’s firing and subsequent arrest in December. Right or wrong, the ongoing investigation by the law firm Jenner & Block is seen by many at Michigan as a referendum on Manuel’s leadership.
The inflection point of Manuel’s tenure came in early 2024. After years of butting heads with Michigan’s administration, Jim Harbaugh won a national championship in football and left to coach the Los Angeles Chargers. A few months later, Manuel fired Juwan Howard, the program legend he hired to replace John Beilein as coach of the men’s basketball team. Of the two coaches Manuel picked to fill those jobs, one has succeeded beyond Michigan’s wildest imagination, while the other flamed out in spectacular fashion.
If Manuel gets the blame for failing to see the warning signs with Moore, it’s only fair to credit him for seeing the potential in Dusty May. Manuel wasn’t the only person who saw it, but plenty of people thought May’s Final Four run at Florida Atlantic was a flash in the pan. You could name 50 other schools that wish they’d had the means or the foresight to do what Michigan did when it hired May.
As good as May’s hiring looks in hindsight, Moore’s looks equally bad. At the time, it seemed like an obvious choice: Moore was Harbaugh’s chosen successor, and the January timing of Harbaugh’s departure didn’t lend itself to a lengthy coaching search. Still, Manuel is privy to inside information and gets paid to get these decisions right. Based on everything that’s come out since Moore’s firing, there should have been signs that he was ill-prepared to handle the job he was given.
In Kyle Whittingham, Michigan hopes it hired a culture-builder who can repair the cracks in the program’s foundation. But even if Michigan comes out ahead, the reputational damage from Moore’s tenure still happened on Manuel’s watch.
“Look, my record … I don’t know a place in America that doesn’t have issues,” Manuel said. “I don’t know a household, I don’t know a family, I don’t know a company that doesn’t have issues. What I’m proud of is the way that our people continue to move forward.”
Manuel isn’t entirely wrong, but most other athletic departments haven’t faced issues of the same magnitude as Michigan’s. That was apparent when Moore, a man who led one of the most valuable college football programs in America, had to stand in front of a judge and answer for the actions that landed him in Washtenaw County jail.
The most serious charges against Moore, including stalking and third-degree home invasion, didn’t hold up in court. Even so, Moore made serious errors in judgment by having a romantic relationship with a subordinate and lying about it, facts that do not appear to be in dispute. In hindsight, it’s clear that Michigan should have intervened earlier to avert a situation that could have been even more tragic than it was.
That’s a consistent critique of Michigan’s athletic department, and in many ways the university as a whole. The biggest scandals of the past few years happened because Michigan failed to address problems that were hiding in plain sight. Once Jenner & Block completes its report, which should happen at some point this spring, university leaders will have to decide whether those missteps outweigh the success of Michigan’s athletic programs during Manuel’s tenure.
One complicating factor is the situation involving Michigan’s president. The school announced last week that Kent Syverud, who was chosen as Michigan’s president-elect in January, will not take office after being diagnosed with brain cancer. Grasso, who has been serving as Michigan’s president since Santa Ono’s departure last May, will remain in office while Michigan conducts another presidential search.
In his praise for Manuel, Grasso didn’t sound like a president who is preparing to oust his athletic director. Michigan’s national championship and the optimism surrounding Whittingham’s arrival have given Manuel some breathing room while giving fans much-needed relief from the dark cloud that hung over Ann Arbor in December.
It’s hard to hold all of that in mind at once, but fans have gotten used to it by now. Manuel has, too.
“I don’t worry about the noise that’s out there,” Manuel said. “I just do the work that needs to be done to continue to make us great.”
