AD Warde Manuel leaving University of Michigan at end of calendar year
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The University of Michigan will be in search of a new athletics director for the first time in a decade, as Warde Manuel is set to depart at the end of the calendar year. He will leave Ann Arbor a few years early, as he just signed a five-year extension on Dec. 5, 2024 to keep him in Ann Arbor through June 30, 2030.
Manuel played football at Michigan under legendary head coach Bo Schembechler from 1986-89 before a neck injury cut his football career short. He then competed on the Michigan track and field team before graduating from the university in 1990.
After a stint as the athletics director at UConn, Manuel was hired at Michigan for the same role in Jan. 2016. During his tenure, Michigan won three straight Big Ten titles and a national title in football, and a men’s basketball national championship in April.
But for all those accolades, Manuel’s tenure was defined as much by controversy as by success. Ultimately, it appears the accumulation of scandals under his watch proved too much to overcome.
The list of misconduct that occurred under Manuel’s watch is lengthy and well-documented. The football program issued a self-imposed three-game suspension of former head coach Jim Harbaugh for watching workouts over Zoom during the COVID recruiting dead period, with analysts performing on-field coaching and Harbaugh allegedly misleading NCAA investigators.
The football program also went through Connor Stallions’ sign-stealing scandal — we all know that story, so we won’t fully rehash that today. Former quarterbacks coach and co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss was indicted in March 2025 on 14 federal counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft, after authorities said he hacked into the private computer accounts of thousands of college athletes during his time at Michigan. Despite a publicly troubled past, Harbaugh still hired Shemy Schembechler for a short period before he resigned. Denard Robinson and Greg Scruggs also resigned in the same offseason for separate drunk driving incidents.
In December, Manuel fired head football coach Sherrone Moore after the school learned of an inappropriate relationship he had with a staffer. Hours after the firing, Moore was arrested and charged following entering the staffer’s apartment without permission. In March, he pleaded no contest to the two misdemeanors and later received probation and a fine.
Additionally, the Ann Arbor Police Department announced in February it is investigating allegations of sexual assault against former football staffer LaTroy Lewis. The allegations stem from a Dec. 2024 incident while Lewis was on the Michigan football staff. He is accused of rape, battery and threatening the life of the female victim, according to the victim’s attorney. Lewis was then fired from the position he held with the Atlanta Falcons.
On the hockey front, Manuel fired former Michigan hockey coach Mel Pearson in 2022 after a 68-page report included evidence that Pearson committed misconduct several times, including retaliation against former goaltender Strauss Mann for raising concerns about the program, bullying and harassing women in the program, and encouraging student athletes to lie on COVID-19 contact tracing records.
Moving over to men’s basketball, former head coach Juwan Howard was suspended for five games in 2022 when he struck Wisconsin assistant Joe Krabbenhoft following the conclusion of a road contest, and was subsequently fired a year later after finishing the season with an 8-24 overall record.
And most recently, for the fourth time in the last seven years, a beloved coach in a major sport left the University of Michigan, with Manuel as the common denominator. In 2019, John Beilein left for the Cleveland Cavaliers. Harbaugh left for the NFL after winning the national title in Jan. 2024. And most recently, Dusty May departed for the Dallas Mavericks just two months after delivering the program’s first national basketball championship since 1989 — a development that drew significant criticism of Manuel’s ability to retain elite coaching talent.
What comes next
The university now faces the task of finding a new athletic director at one of the most complex moments in the department’s recent history, with a football program entering its first season under Kyle Whittingham, a men’s basketball program winning a national title and immediately having to replace its head coach, and a long list of ongoing controversies still needing to be fully resolved.
Luckily, this announcement gives the university the time it needs to find a new athletics director. Michigan is a high profile job, so there should be a long list of candidates.
Stay with Maize n Brew as we continue to learn more.
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