Michigan AD Warde Manuel will step down as school set to release findings of investigation

Warde Manuel spent last week insisting publicly he wasn't going anywhere. However, as Michigan prepares to release the findings of the investigation into its athletic department today, the school has shared announced Manuel is set to step down.

The school confirmed that Manuel will step down as athletic director at the end of the calendar year, closing out a decade in Ann Arbor that produced a national championship in football and a stack of headlines across athletics, many of them involving football, that finally caught up to him. 

The timing is the part that will get coaches talking, because six days ago Manuel was telling anyone who asked that he had no intention of leaving.

Manuel went on WTKA with Sam Webb last Tuesday and gave about as honest an answer as an administrator can give when the ground is moving underneath him.

"I don't know what the future is going to be and how long I'll be in this position," Manuel said. "I do know that I'm here today and I do know that I'm going to be here tomorrow. And I do feel confident in the things I have done here at Michigan."

He was firmer with Yahoo Sports the same week, pointing to conversations with interim university president Domenico Grasso.

"The president and I have had several great conversations over the past couple of days," Manuel said. "There are no plans for me not to continue to be the athletic director for the near future."

Asked by The Detroit News on Monday whether he was staying, Manuel texted back, "Yes, I am." He also allowed that he was "not 100% certain yet" about where things were headed, and he didn't deny that buyout conversations had happened. He told reporters he'd had "several" conversations over the previous six or seven months about his future and other opportunities.

He also got a laugh out of the whole thing, noting he'd been fired "three times by social media in the 10 years" he's been at Michigan.

Then the Board of Regents met Thursday in Traverse City and did not discuss Manuel or the athletics investigation at all. Grasso, asked afterward about his earlier description of Manuel as the best AD in the country, softened it to "one of the best athletic directors in the country," then added: "that's under consideration. We're still thinking about it."

That's not a vote of confidence. That's a president buying himself a week.

The Chicago firm Jenner & Block was brought in last December after Sherrone Moore was fired as head football coach over an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. The scope widened from there into a review of the culture of the entire athletic department, and the bill has reportedly climbed to roughly $12 million. Naturally, Manuel's leadership as the head of the athletic department landed inside that scope.

Among the early returns from that report, Pete Thamel shares that the report "identified failures to quickly and effectively act on allegations of wrongdoing by Athletic Department employees." More on the report to come later today.

Michigan interim president Domenico Grasso had the following the share; "The review also identified interference, poor oversight, and failures of accountability by the highest levels of university leadership. This must change."

Still, Manuel will remain atop the athletic department until the end of the calendar year.

A former Michigan defensive lineman under Bo Schembechler, Manuel took over as AD in January 2016 after AD stops at Buffalo and UConn. He hired Jim Harbaugh's successor, oversaw the 2023 national title team, and signed off on hires across the department, including the basketball transition that put Mike Boynton in the chair after Dusty May left for the NBA.

He also signed a five-year extension in December 2024, which is why this gets expensive. Under that deal, Manuel is eligible for severance equal to the remainder of his term through 2030 or 36 months, whichever is shorter. At north of $2 million annually in total compensation, that's a significant number for a school that just spent eight figures investigating itself.

Michigan will now run one of the more attractive AD searches in the country, with a football program to stabilize and Kyle Whittingham now in charge there, a basketball staff in its first full cycle, and revenue-share math that every department is still figuring out. Whoever takes it inherits a job with resources and a spotlight.

Stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.