Michigan rolls in hoops and hockey but a football scandal leaves the athletic director on thin ice
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — These are strange days at Michigan.
The men's basketball team is at the Final Four for the first time in eight years. The men's hockey team is at the Frozen Four for the fourth time in five years. The women's basketball team made the Elite Eight for the second time ever.
The athletic director overseeing it all? Fighting for his job.
Warde Manuel's future likely hinges on the results of an internal investigation about the culture in his athletic department, a probe triggered by the firing of football coach Sherrone Moore that was the latest in a string of scandals involving the Wolverines under Manuel's watch.
Complicating matters is that Michigan is preparing to install its fifth president in five years: Kent Syverud who might seek continuity in a program that is racking up wins but has no allegiance to Manuel, whose Michigan roots extend to when he played defensive line for Bo Schembechler in the 1980s.
“I will leave it up to the president and the board to determine, ultimately, how they see success and how they see me,” Manuel told The Associated Press this week at the Final Four. “What I do know is what (the teams' success) shows.”
Also this season, the Wolverines women's swimming program finished sixth at nationals and its men finished eighth. The wrestling program finished seventh. The reality of big-time college sports, however, is that football drives the narrative, and even with a national title trophy from 2023 back on campus, that story at Michigan has not been pleseant.
Moore's arrest in December came shortly after he was fired when the school learned he was having an affair with his executive assistant. Last month, Moore pleaded no contest to two misdemeanors as part of a deal to resolve the case.
Moore's predecessor, Jim Harbaugh, was coaching during a sign-stealing scandal that resulted in harsh NCAA sanctions that Manuel recently said would cost the school more than $30 million.
Elsewhere in the athletics department, there have been reports of a toxic, misogynistic culture inside the hockey program; the ouster of a gymnastics coach after police found him engaged in sexual activity with a student; more than one violent episode involving Michigan's last basketball coach, Juwan Howard; and the resignation of a football assistant after his arrest for drunk driving.
Manuel has been in charge during all of that. He is also, in many ways, a sign of stability and success — Michigan has won 29 Big Ten titles across all sports since 2020 — at a school that needs it.
The revolving door in the president's office began in 2022, when Mark Schlissel was fired for an inappropriate relationship with a university employee.
His tenure was riddled with headlines about the reworking of sexual-misconduct policies at the school after more than a thousand former athletes came forward to allege a one-time sports doctor at the school, the late Robert Anderson, sexually abused them. The scandal resulted in a $490 million settlement between the school and the atheltes.
The presidents who followed Schlissel maneuvered through the fallout from the pandemic and struggled to deal with on-campus protests and a rethinking of diversity-equity-inclusion policy on campus in the wake of new guidance from the Trump Administration.
One of the presidents, Santa Ono, left last year to become the president of Florida, only to have his candidacy there unexpectedly rejected after board members criticized his management of DEI at Michigan.
Sports, which has the power to overshadow headlines about school's problems, instead has only added to them at Michigan. The outgoing interim president, Domenico Grasso, gave Manuel something less than a vote of confidence in an interview this week with the Michigan Daily in Ann Arbor.
“Intercollegiate athletics are a tremendous source of pride for ... the U-M community and it’s important that the department reflects the values of the university and its position to move forward in a strong, positive way,” he told the outlet.
In his interview with AP, Manuel, who has four years left on his contract, didn't shirk his responsibility for the troubles in his department.
“Yes, we're not perfect," he said. “But tell me an organization that is. Anybody can walk into another person's house and say, ‘This is missing, you should do this, you should do that.’ But the people, I'm very proud of them."
He didn't agree with the notion that, as leader of the department, he's the person to blame for every individual choice every person makes. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“What I do know is, my colleagues across the country, if they had achieved this level of success, they would have received an extension,” Manuel said.
The 57-year-old Manuel might still receive one. He also might be looking for work. It remains a mystery as to what impact the results this weekend in Indianpolis (basketball) and next week in Las Vegas (hockey) will have on any of it.
“I walk with my head held high and a big smile on my face for the success they're achieving,” Manuel said. “I know the work we've done, administratively and from the sport-by-sport perspective, to be in this situation we're in today and have these great sports teams that we can continue to cheer on.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness