Ann Arbor — The University of Michigan isn’t likely to make a quick decision, but action could be taken on the athletic director’s future as a law firm investigates the athletic department’s culture, according to two sources, after a string of controversies and scandals culminated in the head football coach’s firing over an alleged inappropriate relationship with a staffer.
After Coach Sherrone Moore was fired last week and then arrested and charged for allegedly breaking into the staffer’s home and threatening her, criticism of Athletic Director Warde Manuel grew. As more information came out, such as that Manuel reportedly fired Moore without a human resources representative or security present despite knowing he had mental health issues, the unrest over Manuel became louder.
Even some UM fans have called for his firing, something blogger Von Lozon recapped in a blog post on Maize and Brew: “At the end of the day, this is yet another incident that happened right under Warde’s nose,” he wrote. “Another scandal going on while his back is seemingly turned. Another national story that has rival fans laughing at the university AGAIN. So at this point, the question basically asks itself — when will Warde face the same scrutiny as the coaches he continues to hire and, inevitably, lose in embarrassing fashion?”
The board is in the midst of a search for a permanent president. Because the university’s president is in charge of hiring and firing an athletic director, board members would prefer to wait before deciding whether to support any decision regarding Manuel, two sources familiar with the board’s plans but not authorized to speak publicly told The Detroit News.
However, the board has authorized the firm that investigated the rumors of Moore’s affair with the staff member to expand its inquiry into his firing by Manuel and the culture of the athletic department. If the investigation finds anything that shows Manuel allowed misconduct to continue without taking action, the board and interim President Domenico Grasso would take appropriate action, the two sources said.
In a Wednesday video posted online in a message to the community, Grasso outlined that the university had expanded its Moore probe to “assess whether there may be related misconduct by others.”
“If the university learns of information through this investigation or otherwise that warrants the termination of any employee, we will act swiftly, just as we did in the case of Coach Moore,” the interim president said. “I ask that you keep an open mind and allow investigators to do their work and not make assumptions.”
UM’s athletic department said it couldn’t comment on a personnel matter beyond the two-paragraph statement it issued last week when Moore was fired.
If Manuel erred in when and how he fired Moore or how he leads the department, his employability should be called into question, said Aaron Hernandez, the assistant dean and executive director of the Allan Selig Sports Law and Business Program at Arizona State University. If not, there might not be a reason to fire the athletic director of nearly 10 years, he said.
But it does get to a point where repeated scandals should cause an athletic director to look inward at their leadership and their department, said Matt Huml, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati who studies athletic department management.
“It’s his job to know,” Huml said. “He’s getting paid to know what’s going on. When there’s repeated scandals, you have to take a look at what’s going wrong.”
Expert: ‘Humans are probability bombs’
Manuel, who is also a former Michigan football player, has been successful at the most emphasized aspect of an athletic director’s job: winning.
From 2020-24, Michigan won 52 Big Ten championships across all sports, according to the university. That includes Michigan’s 2023 national football championship. The next closest conference competitor is Ohio State with 28 league titles.
Like managers in any other industry, athletic directors cannot control the actions of the people who work beneath them, said Hernandez, who is also a former National Collegiate Athletic Association investigator and knows Manuel. More important is what they do when they’re alerted to misconduct, he said.
“While everyone is responsible for maintaining a healthy culture, there are main stewards for making sure the control and culture exist — one of which is the athletic director,” Hernandez said. “(Athletic directors) represent the interest of the Athletic Department as a whole, and their vision cascades down to everyone, including the coaches.”
The Arizona State expert said he believed Manuel acted when he had enough information to fire Moore for cause and protect the university from a wrongful termination lawsuit.
“Warde’s got a good handle on what he’s dealing with,” Hernandez said. “No one would have hired someone who had this rap sheet. No one knew this was going to happen. No one wanted this. Humans are probability bombs.”
Former UM Athletic Director Tom Goss said the job of an athletic director is more than its public perception. Students, alumni, faculty and the regents could never really know the pressures of the job overseeing nearly 1,000 student-athletes and 30-plus programs that he said require the director to be always available.
“It’s one of the largest, if not the largest, athletic departments in the country,” said Goss, who was athletic director from 1997-2000. “It’s a 24-hours-a-day job. You would think your student athletes are the ones you have to watch out for.”
Manuel has been the standard for leadership, not just within the state but nationally, he said.
“The department (Manuel ran) is of no nonsense,” said Goss, who became UM’s first Black athletic director. “He could have a job anywhere; he probably wouldn’t want one anywhere else.”
Repeated scandals under Manuel
When scandals start adding up, an athletic director should expect fingers pointed their way, or at least questions about their leadership style, the University of Cincinnati’s Huml said.
“When there’s repeated scandals, you have to take a look at what’s going on within the department,” Huml said. “As an AD, you need to take an assessment. What are the issues? Talk to your main stakeholders, and ask ‘What’s going on?’ and ‘How is the athletic department failing?'”
The department hasn’t necessarily seen the most scandals under Manuel, said former Athletic Director Bill Martin, who was athletic director from 2000 to 2010. However, he said, if the investigation finds that changes in leadership need to be made, he’d be in support.
“We’ve had other periods that have been like this. … I wouldn’t want to blow it out of proportion,” Martin said.
“(The regents) need to get to the facts and take the proper action. … (The athletic department) is held to a different standard than anyone else in the university because the press and the public focus on us. … If the leadership is weak, you have to make a change and bring in new leadership.”
Moore is far from the only head coach Manuel oversaw who broke the rules.
At the end of the NCAA’s investigation into the football sign-stealing scandal orchestrated by staffer Connor Stalions, former coach Jim Harbaugh was given a 10-year show-cause order that would have banned him from coaching in college sports until 2038.
Harbaugh “refused” to participate in a hearing before the infractions committee, the NCAA said in a release.
“Head coaches are presumed responsible for violations that occur within their programs,” the release reads. “Due to Harbaugh’s personal involvement in the violations and his failure to monitor his staff, he could not rebut the presumption, resulting in a violation of head coach responsibility rules.”
Moore was also suspended for two games this season as part of self-imposed sanctions related to the sign-stealing investigation. The NCAA added a third game to the suspension, which would have kept Moore off the sideline for the 2026 opener.
Former basketball coach Juwan Howard confronted University of Wisconsin basketball coach Greg Gard in the handshake line after a game in February 2022. The discussion became heated, and Howard struck a Wisconsin assistant coach in the face.
The Big Ten suspended Howard for the final five games of the regular season and fined him $40,000 — a punishment that was widely regarded as lenient but one that was endorsed by Manuel. The athletic director did not levy any further punishment on Howard.
Manuel fired Howard in March 2024 after the basketball team went 8-24, one of the team’s worst records. While the athletic director lauded Howard’s contributions, including his time in the early 1990s as a member of the Fab Five as a player, “the program was not living up to our expectations and not trending in the right direction.”
Manuel also failed to take action against former hockey coach Mel Pearson after a report found various examples of misconduct by Pearson and “cultural issues” within the hockey program. Three months after he received the 70-page report by WilmerHale, a Washington D.C.-based law firm, the athletic director decided to fire Pearson in August 2022.
Pearson had been working the entire time, and Manuel never said why it took him three months to take action on the report’s findings, which included allegations that Pearson retained employees who had “contemporaneous knowledge of sexual conduct committed by former university physician Dr. Robert Anderson,” mistreating women associated with the program, violating the university’s COVID-19 safety protocols, and “retaliation against and unfair treatment of student-athletes.”
Other issues include his son, Evan Manuel, loaning his mom’s car to players, ending in basketball player Zavier Simpson wrecking a 2011 Toyota RAV4 while driving in downtown Ann Arbor in the early morning of Jan. 26, 2020. Police dash- and body-camera footage obtained by The News through a public records request showed Simpson providing a fake name, changing his story and eventually admitting the SUV was loaned out to student-athletes.
A member of Harbaugh’s staff, Matt Weiss, who was promoted to co-offensive coordinator under Moore, is facing criminal charges that allege he infiltrated the personal accounts of thousands of college athletes and stole intimate photographs and videos from 2015-23.
Weiss faces 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison on each computer charge and two years on each identity theft charge.
But a lawyer for Weiss has argued that university investigators used “blatantly unlawful” search warrants to raid the coordinator’s home and offices and that a federal judge should suppress evidence collected from computers, phones and electronic devices.
An athletic director’s responsibilities
While it’s impossible for an athletic director to know everything that happens inside a department, the director should scrutinize their high-profile head coaches, Huml said. Even if coaches are allowed some privacy in their personal lives, anything that could affect the department should be a concern for the athletic director, he said.
And the business of their employees is a significant part of the role, said Brian Gearity, founder and director of the Master of Arts in Sport Coaching degree at the University of Denver.
“Athletic directors are responsible for liability and risk mitigation,” Gearity said. “They’ve got to be aware of people’s vices to help them manage the things that come up.”
The profiles of the people who report to an athletic director make this especially important, Gearity said. Often, they’re national names and can be among the highest earners in their state. Supervisors at any job have to deal with their employees’ behavior, but there’s “only one head football coach” at UM, he said.
But in the murky world of college football, it can be difficult for athletic directors to determine what’s a legitimate issue or another rumor among many, ASU’s Hernandez said. Even the reported pay increase for the staffer who had a relationship with Moore after he became head coach could be explained, he said.
“If she was doing good work and they wanted to keep her, the pay increase wouldn’t stick out,” Hernandez said. “This is just a thing for women, ‘Oh, she got a pay bump, I bet she’s sleeping with the coach.’ Guys get pay raises that have done that work and don’t get those allegations.”
The number of infractions at UM might be the result of Michigan’s legal landscape that encourages transparency, he added. If what happened at UM — and other Michigan schools for that matter — took place outside the state, they might have never seen the light of day, Hernandez said.
satwood@detroitnews.com
Staff writer Angelique Chengelis contributed.
