Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel talks Dusty May contract deal
Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel talks Dusty May contract extension in Ann Arbor on Friday, Feb. 21, 2025.
Warde Manuel will step down as the University of Michigan athletic director at the end of the year and a search for his replacement will be conducted, officials announced on Monday, July 20.
The announcement comes on the heels of a slew of lawsuits and investigations, including one conducted by Jenner & Block for over $12 million dollars. The firm was brought on shortly after the firing of former Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore for cause for an alleged “inappropriate relationship” with his executive assistant, Paige Shiver, and expanded into a more wide-ranging look at the athletic department culture as a whole.
Michigan also decided to release some findings from the Jenner & Block report on Monday after initially saying that there was no plan to share the report publicly at the time.
The information released on Manuel was mixed.
“The culture review found that Warde Manuel demonstrated important leadership strengths, particularly his commitment to student-athletes. At the same time, it identified failures to quickly and effectively act on allegations of wrongdoing by Athletic Department employees,” Michigan announced in a statement on its public affairs website.
Moore’s firing was perhaps the tipping point after bad press and scandals riddled the athletic department in recent years under Manuel’s leadership, which includes Shiver suing the university and claiming they hid public records, as well as former linebackers coach Chris Partridge filing suit against the board of regents, Manuel, former president Santa Ono and Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti.
The suit claims the school’s ex-president actively worked to hide details of the football team’s sign stealing scandal – and that athletic department leaders knew about Moore’s affair with a staff member years before it led to his ouster.
Manuel signed a five-year contract extension in December 2024 with a $1.9 million base salary and $350,000 annually in deferred payments.
Manuel’s original contract, agreed to on Jan. 29, 2016, was extended in February 2021 to run through June 30, 2026. The new deal was set to take Manuel through June 30, 2030.
“During Warde’s tenure as director, Athletics has put a structure in place where our student-athletes compete for Big Ten and national championships, excel in the classroom, and proudly graduate with their University of Michigan degrees,” then-Michigan president Santa J. Ono said during a Board of Regents’ meeting in December 2024 around the time Manuel was extended.
Manuel, 58, was a defensive lineman at Michigan in the 1980s under coach Bo Schembechler and was the 12th athletic director in school history.
While there was a great deal of success between the lines − football (2024), women’s and men’s gymnastics (2021 and 2025, respectively) and basketball (2026) all won national championships under Manuel’s watch − simultaneously, his 11-year tenure was littered with scandals, suspensions and arrests.
During coach Jim Harbaugh’s tenure, the Wolverines were twice investigated by the NCAA and put on probation for separate instances. First, U-M suspended Harbaugh for three games to open the 2023 season for violating recruiting protocol during the 2020 COVID-19 dead period after a negotiated resolution fell through with the NCAA. U-M was found to have impermissible in-person recruiting contacts and exceeded the number of allowed coaches participating in both “on- and off-field coaching activities,” according to the NCAA.
U-M was put on probation for three seasons as a result and Harbaugh (four years) and staffers Steve Clinkscale (two years) and Jesse Minter (one year) were given show-causes.
In August 2025, the NCAA ruled on U-M’s sign-stealing saga that shook college football in 2023. Michigan was put on probation for four years (through April 10, 2031) after it was discovered former staffer Connor Stalions allegedly orchestrated a scheme to steal opponents signs during an impermissible in-person scouting scheme.
“We shouldn’t have been anywhere near this,” Manuel told the Free Press in November. “Doing this, it is a rule, and I believe that we should follow the rules that are on the books of the NCAA.”
The Wolverines were facing 11 separate violations, including six of the Level I variety — deemed as the most serious of offenses.
U-M was put on four years probation, ordered to pay fines that would exceed $30 million − a figure Manuel confirmed − given a 14-week prohibition on recruiting communications in the football program during across probation period, and given a 25% reduction in football official visits during the 2025.
Four staffers were given show causes, including Harbaugh (10 years), Stalions (eight years), Denard Robinson (three years) and Moore (two years).
“Their conduct ranged from destroying relevant materials to providing false and misleading information during interviews − including Stalions instructing an intern to ‘clear out’ emails, photos, texts and videos related to the scouting scheme,” the NCAA stated. “The intern complied and then instructed a friend, who attended and recorded three games as part of the scheme, to do the same. During the hearing, Stalions stated that he did not recall telling them to delete any information.
“In short, Stalions’ multiple and repeated failures to cooperate are some of the worst the COI has ever seen.”
Since 2020, Michigan has won more than 50 Big Ten championships across all of its sports, more than twice as many as the nearest other opponent. However, along the way there have been myriad issues in three of the four primary programs.
Michigan fired three high-profile coaches Manuel hired: Moore, basketball coach Juwan Howard and hockey coach Mel Pearson. Moore and Pearson were each involved in scandals which led to their firing. Howard had two embarrassing postgame feuds with opposing coaches, including smacking a Wisconsin assistant in the face during a skirmish in the postgame handshake line in 2022, leading to a five-game suspension before he finished his run with the worst single-season record in program history in 2023-24.
Additionally, Manuel was also scrutinized for his inability to sign Harbaugh and former basketball coach Dusty May to extensions (even though an agreement was announced with May) following their national title seasons as both went to the NFL and NBA, respectively.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
