In the wake of the Sherrone Moore scandal at Michigan, there are now questions as to whether athletic director Warde Manuel can survive the latest tumult on campus, or if he should survive it.<\/p>\n
Moore was fired on Wednesday after the school said an investigation showed he had an inappropriate relationship with an athletic department staff member. A few hours later, he was taken into custody by the Saline, Michigan, police. He was ultimately transferred to Pittsfield Township, where he remains in custody as of this publishing, while an investigation into domestic assault charges continues. Neither police department has revealed details of the allegations.<\/p>\n
But the current crisis with the head coaching position at Michigan is just the latest circus to hit Ann Arbor under Manuel\u2019s athletic department leadership.<\/p>\n
There was a false social media post by the president of Barstool Sports on Thursday night claiming that Manuel had been fired. Even though the person who did the post is a Michigan financial booster, the report was proven to be incorrect.<\/p>\n
But there is confirmation that Michigan board members, as well as representatives from the school\u2019s administration, have been on conference calls discussing Manuel\u2019s future. He has been the athletic director at Michigan since 2016. Manuel currently has a contract that runs through 2030 and carries a total compensation package of approximately $2.4 million. His contract was extended in 2023 to get to the current 2030 timeframe.<\/p>\n
In 2023, the Michigan football program was at the center of an NCAA investigation into in-person scouting by Connor Stalions, and sign-stealing by assistant coaches. Head coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended for the final three games of the season, with Moore taking over as interim. Harbaugh had already been suspended prior to that for recruiting during a dead period during the Covid year. Harbaugh left for the NFL instead of subjecting himself to further investigations.<\/p>\n
Moore was named the new head coach prior to the 2024 season. He was given a two-game suspension prior to the start of the 2025 season for his role in the sign-stealing scandal.<\/p>\n
Those were the headline-grabbing moments under Manuel. But there has been more. In 2022, the school fired the hockey coach for telling players to lie on their Covid contact-tracing paperwork.<\/p>\n
In January of 2023, the football program fired co-offensive coordinator Matt Weiss for illegally accessing personal accounts on the university email system.<\/p>\n
And Juwan Howard had multiple incidents during his tenure as the men\u2019s basketball coach prior to being fired in March of last year.<\/p>\n
But the latest accusations against Manuel may be more than the school is prepared to absorb.<\/p>\n
There are reports from anonymous sources within the school that Manuel knew about Moore\u2019s inappropriate relationship several weeks ago. But that he waited until after the Ohio State game, and until after the football program\u2019s 2026 high school recruiting class had been signed, before he punished Moore. With relatively new NCAA rules in place, that entire recruiting class, as well as the entire Michigan team, now has its own 30-day window to enter the transfer portal because their head coach is gone. The regular portal window opens on January 2nd<\/sup>.<\/p>\n And NBC Sports reported Thursday that Manuel had been warned in recent weeks about potential mental and emotional health issues with Moore. But when Moore was fired Thursday, it was just him and Manuel in the room with no human resources representative and no offer of assistance or support if there were mental health issues.<\/p>\n There have been unconfirmed reports that the arrest on Thursday night came after an emotional break by Moore that led to the assault allegations.<\/p>\n Manuel has held high positions in the national college sports landscape. He has been a member of the College Football Playoff Committee since 2022 and was chair of the 2024 committee.<\/p>\n Michigan football insider Biff Poggi is leading the Wolverines\u2019 preparation for the Citrus Bowl against Texas on New Year\u2019s Eve. Meanwhile, it is expected that Michigan administrators will continue to address the Warde Manuel issue at the school.<\/p>\n Main Image: David Rodriguez Munoz \/ USA TODAY NETWORK \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of the Sherrone Moore scandal at Michigan, there are now questions as to whether athletic director Warde Manuel can survive the latest tumult on campus, or if he should survive it. Will Warde Manuel Survive the Latest Michigan Turmoil? Moore was fired on Wednesday after the school said an investigation showed he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":83766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,2,35631,17],"tags":[32758,462,3011,33966],"class_list":["post-83764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bigten","category-featured","category-michigan-wolverines","category-news","tag-connor-stalions","tag-jim-harbaugh","tag-sherrone-moore","tag-warde-manuel"],"modified_by":"Tony Siracusa, CFB Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83767,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83764\/revisions\/83767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What’s Next?<\/h3>\n