How a Run of Scandals Led to Michigan Announcing End of Warde Manuel’s AD Tenure

Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel plans to leave his post at the conclusion of the 2026 calendar year, the Wolverines announced Monday morning.

Manuel, 58, has served in his post since 2016. He played defensive tackle for Michigan from 1986 to ‘89 under coach Bo Schembechler, and previously served as UConn’s athletic director.

“I am very proud of all the successes and accomplishments of our athletic department over the past 11 years,” Manuel said in a statement via Ralph D. Russo of The Athletic. “I am happy President Grasso asked me to stay on to work with him to implement the recommendations for continuous improvement. I will have more to say about my decision at the appropriate time.”

His exit comes amid a series of high-profile controversies that led the Wolverines to commission a $12 million independent investigation of their athletic department by the Chicago law firm Jenner & Block.

On Monday, Michigan released a heavily abridged summary of the as-of-yet confidential Jenner & Block report, which included language praising Manuel for “[demonstrating] important leadership strengths, particularly his commitment to student-athletes” while finding “failures to quickly and effectively act on allegations of wrongdoing by athletic department employees.”

Manuel’s tenure at Michigan: victories and controversies galore

U-M athletic director Warde Manuel speaks during the Alumni Territory Rose Bowl Pep Rally at USC's Galen Center in Los Angele — Warde Manuel will depart Michigan at the end of the year after a decade-long run as athletic director at his alma mater. | USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

The Wolverines hired Manuel in ‘16 to replace Dave Brandon, and on paper they hit a home run. Almost every sport of note succeeded in some form or fashion under Manuel, including football (2023 national champions), men’s basketball (‘26 national champions), women’s basketball (two Elite Eights), baseball (2019 Men’s College World Series runners-up), and men’s hockey (five Frozen Fours).

However, scandal plagued the athletic department at every turn, with former coach Sherrone Moore’s arrest upon his abrupt 2025 exit seemingly serving as the straw that broke the camel’s back. Under Manuel, Michigan dismissed men’s basketball coach Juwan Howard, men’s hockey coach Mel Pearson, and football offensive coordinator Matt Weiss amid three separate controversies; Pearson’s firing involved serious misconduct allegations and Weiss’s preceded a federal indictment on 24 charges of alleged computer access crimes.

Manuel inherited football coach Jim Harbaugh from Brandon, and Harbaugh won enough to render the Wolverines’ early-2010s gridiron dysfunction a distant memory. However, once Michigan began to really win after the COVID-19 pandemic, reports painted Harbaugh and Manuel as locked in a power struggle (Manuel denied these). Either way, the Wolverines’ title-winning 2023 season—during which Michigan technically employed five head coaches, because Harbaugh served two suspensions related to recruiting violations and allegations of sign stealing—hardly pointed to a department on the same page.

What did the abridged Jenner & Block report say?

Keeping in mind that the Wolverines’ release was not the final report but rather a filtered facsimile of it, nothing much. Per Michigan, the investigation identified three areas of improvement: “leadership accountability,” “organizational structure” and “reporting culture”; in response, the department plans to change policy in six areas from compliance to human resources.

The Wolverines insisted that “neither the investigation nor the culture review found that misconduct was widespread throughout the department,” but that did not stop Michigan president Domenico Grasso from calling the investigation’s findings “unacceptable.”

Calls to release the full Jenner & Block report have been widespread, including from counsel for both Moore and Paige Shiver, the ex-Wolverines staffer with whom Moore carried out the relationship that resulted in his termination.

In response to those calls, Michigan wrote in its summary that “pending litigation limits the University’s ability to discuss certain facts, evidence, investigative analysis, and personnel matters.”

It seems safe to say that calls to release the report will not abate in the near future, given the gap between the smoothed-over summary and Grasso’s blunt description.

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