Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel is set to leave the program at the end of the calendar year, according to multiple sources, after an outside investigation into the athletic department’s culture produced findings that Michigan has not made public.
The move comes after a turbulent run for Manuel, who oversaw the largest cheating scandal in modern college football history, hired a basketball coach who hit another team’s coach, and allegedly hid the affair of the football coach he hired after the cheater left, which was with another staffer.
Michigan brought in an outside firm to examine the culture around the athletic director, and the results were apparently severe enough that even the program’s leadership couldn’t ignore them. The school is now operating with an interim president after Santa Ono tried to leave to become Florida’s president, but that vote didn’t go through. Even with that instability, the interim president could not swallow the findings.
The university has still refused to release the investigation’s findings. Michigan says the athletic program did not have widespread corruption, but the secrecy has only deepened the cloud around the department.
The source of the problem, as framed here, is bigger than one administrator. Michigan is being portrayed as a program that cares only about finding any way possible to win games while circumventing the rules. The comparison made is to Ohio State, which has had issues of its own with the Richard Strauss scandal, but at least is trying to make that right with the victims.
Manuel’s exit also carries obvious implications for the rivalry. With him gone, the Buckeyes are expected to keep their edge over TTUN in the best rivalry in sports. Kyle Whittingham is described as a stop-gap coach who won’t be there long-term, and Ohio State is viewed as too good, with a culture too strong, to lose too many games in the matchup.
The Buckeyes, according to the source, are satisfied with the way their athletics are run and no longer have to worry about cheating being rampant throughout the athletic department, especially in football. The fallout from Manuel’s tenure is expected to linger until he is actually gone at the end of 2026, and the source says he delivered plenty of success on the field by being willing to overlook the rules.
Ohio State, by contrast, is presented as staying above board, even if Ross Bjork might have some issues. The central contrast remains the same: one program is trying to clean things up, and the other is still trying to keep the details hidden.
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