How a Chance Encounter with Bo Schembechler Shaped Warde Manuels path to Michigan. Live at Knight’s

[All right, welcome to Scar and Due. Welcome to Hail Media and welcome to Warde Manuel. Thank you, brother. Appreciate you. We’re here at Knight’s Steakhouse. How was dinner? Unbelievable. Fantastic as it always is. It’s amazing. Yeah, if you’re in Ann Arbor—yeah, it’s one of Warde’s favorite. It’s a great place. Great food. Go to Knight’s Steakhouse. If you don’t know, Warde and I were teammates. Warde got there in 1986. So I was a junior at that time.

Warde and I were on the demo squad for a little while. Yeah. I think we played under Agase for a year on the demo squad. Yeah, exactly. And I wanted to find out I’ve been meaning to ask this. How does a guy from New Orleans find his way to Ann Arbor? Well, it goes no further than to say Bo. He really made an impression on me but I would also say on my mom and dad, who are no longer with us.

My dad was a sergeant in the army during Korea time for eight years. He appreciated discipline and sitting on the couch in my house. My parents were sitting across the way and I was sitting on the couch next to Bo sort of like this. And he says, “Anthony and Yolan, I can tell you what, we will look after him.” And if he messes up and he put his hand on my chest, he says, “We’ll straighten him up.” My dad was fired up, ready to go.

He’s like, “You’re going to Ann Arbor.” And then he told my mother, he goes, “Yolan, this is the best gumbo I’ve ever had.” So now mom’s sold. I was sold on, obviously watching Michigan over the years and seeing him and watching the way the defense played and aggressiveness of the defense and he sold me on that. And so it really came down to Bo. Elliot Uzelac, you remember Coach Uzelac was my recruiting coordinator.

But nothing lit up the room like when Bo was there. And so that’s it. And then I still remember the first time I ever walked into Michigan Stadium and seeing that for the first time and just being blown away. Yeah. By that experience. And so not to mention I had the best recruiter in the world, as a teammate and he recruited me. Dave Chester probably put it over the top for me.

But I would just say Bo was really the reason. Were there any other schools that you had considered? Yeah, I went had a great visit to Nebraska with Tom Osborne and UCLA with Terry Donahue. And then I went to Notre Dame and Coach Holtz was there. It was his first year. That’s right. Yeah. He hadn’t even coached a down for Notre Dame. Yeah. So, those were top four schools that I was in, really looking at.

And I visited LSU as an official visit, but at the time, my parents, particularly my dad, pushed me to get out of the state to go elsewhere and they weren’t as good as they are now, but as a program, but I had five good visits and it just came down to a feel, it came down to Bo and I joke about Dave, but he really did a great job recruiting me, but it was a great weekend.

I mean, we had the number one recruiting class that year in the nation and almost all of us were on the same recruiting visit. Oh, that week and it just sort of worked itself out that we all decided to come. So, it was just a great experience. And one of the guys that would have been on that visit is another guy from New Orleans, Leroy Hoard. Leroy was he was there with us and Leroy and I had known each other since we were children playing against each other playing with each other on all-star baseball teams and yeah he was he was a part of that class this and it’s a great class that it was and you guys really were successful.

Your freshman year we won the Big Ten. Yeah, we did. And then sophomore year we took a year off. Yeah. Then your junior and senior year. Yes, sir. Won three Big Ten championships. Went to Rose Bowl three times. Yeah. Yeah. Then you have an injury. Yeah. Injured my neck. I started my sophomore year defensive end D-line. Well, outside linebacker because they you remember that famous Michigan State game. And then my junior year I had a neck injury that I was working through.

I was in and out of the lineup in my senior year. I had to give it up. Couldn’t play your senior. Yeah. But then, Bo kept me around, wanted to keep me around. We did recruiting, did all kind of things in the office, was around, he wanted me around the team every day. It was just his way of, he said to me when I was injured and couldn’t play anymore coming out of camp, he said, “I promised your mom and dad I’d take care of you and I promise you would get your degree and I want you around the team.” And so, I credit him with starting my administrative career. Well, not quite though, because you did go to the track team.

I did. Yeah, I did that for two years. Threw the javelin for two years. And you won a Big Ten title at that? No, I didn’t win a Big Ten title. I think I came in third or something like that. But I set the Michigan record at the time. Oh, okay. That’s what you set a Michigan. I set the Michigan record, but it’s since been broken. Well, that’s fine. But I mean, for a guy that wasn’t running track or competing in track and field, go from football over there.

Yeah. It was fun. I had a great experience. So you’re get your undergrad degree, you got three Big Ten championship rings, then you get a two master’s degrees or two other degrees from U of M. You meet your beautiful wife, Chryslin here. Yeah, I did. U of M’s been good to the Manuels, but the Manuels have been good to U of M as well. Your son went here. Yeah. Went here undergrad.

Undergrad student manager basketball student manager. For the basketball team for four years under Beilein and then under Juwan, Coach Howard. Yeah. And then our daughter ended up going to UConn while I was there. And then she actually interviewed for med school here a week before I interviewed for the job. And so she got into med school here. I got the AD job. And she paved the way for you. She did. She actually did.

She says I’m following her this time,. So which is which is true. So, dad, mom, son, daughter. Yep. And now a future Wolverine, I think. I hope. Yeah. So, you’re in the grandfather club years hopefully. You’re in the grandfather club. I just joined the grandfather club. It’s the best club out there. Unbelievable. And there’s a chance that our grandsons could be teammates right here in about 17 18 years. That would be unbelievable.

Yeah. So your first job you talked about Bo kept you around and that was your first kind of getting into athletics and then you went to Georgia Tech. Yes. And you were a student advisor. Is that right? Athlete adviser. Yeah. Then you come back to Michigan, right? And then you were working in U of M athletic department for the Wade McCree incentive scholarship. Can you can you tell me about that? Well, actually, Wade McCree was actually down the street in the old Fleming building.

It was a program for high school students in Detroit. If they maintained a 3.0 GPA or above, they were awarded a scholarship for Wade H. McCree, who’s the famous U of M grad. He was a lawyer, a judge, and this was a program that was statewide. Wasn’t just Michigan, but it was statewide. And I coordinated that. A guy by the name of Dr. Charles Moody was vice provost for minority affairs at the time asked me to come in and to lead this program.

I did that for three years while I was in working on my PhD and that’s how I ended up getting a master’s degree in social work. I went into PhD in social work and psychology and so I did that for three years. And it was a remarkable experience. I’ve still seen some of the former students who ended up coming to U of M and then graduating and I’ve seen them at different events and stuff since when I was here before and then when I came back and so it was very enriching experience to help those students in high school achieve their goals of going to college and to doing those things.

And so it still holds a great place in my heart for the for the effort that those students made and the efforts of the people that I work with and helping them and guiding them to earn a degree in high school but also at the University of Michigan. And that’s kind of a common theme that you’ve carried all through your career here is your student athletes being really top priority. Yeah. The championships and the big wins, all great, but at the end of the day, what matters are the student athletes to you.

Yeah, I’ve said it over and over again. I mean, the one thing that we’re going to provide that is consistent to our kids and in athletics and our kids here at the University of Michigan is a University of Michigan degree. It’s the most valuable thing that you can get from this institution. Even with us paying revenue sharing and doing all the stuff that we do now, the most valuable asset to their experience here at University of Michigan is that degree and earning that degree.

And so while we won a lot of championships, I’m proud that we’ve also set a lot of academic records in terms of number of Academic All-Big Ten honorees, the number the graduation rate now in terms of the elevation of it over the past 10 11 years. Those things are really important to me because of the reason we talked about earlier. I came in here as a consensus all-American and I started my sophomore year and I thought I was going pro.

Then I injured my neck and if it wasn’t for me focusing on academics having Bo and my parents and people around me who pushed me to make sure I did that, then I wouldn’t be here today. And that is what I’m saying to them is that I want all of our student athletes to go pro. Matter of fact, I want kids to come here who think they’re going to go pro. Sure.

Because that I want them to elevate and keep on, playing. I want them to go to Olympics and I want them to perform in their sports for a long time. But we know the statistics. But we also know the statistics that if you get a degree from Michigan in a field that you care about and you go on to get into that field, you’ll have a long-term career in and that Michigan degree carries you through your lifetime.

Absolutely. Now, all that time you were doing that and your early part of your career here at Michigan, how was Don Canham an influence? I had the benefit when I was here when I got back here in ’96–’97 to really sit at the feet of the master, if you will, and really learn from him and gain some experience or what it meant to be an administrator, what it meant to lead programs, how did you go about hiring coaches and talking to him?

And he was gracious with his time with me, as a young administrator. But, that meant the world to me that I spent time with him early on in my career and got advice and got guidance and got his perspective and listened to his stories. Matter of fact, on Friday, I’m going to host my last AD reception, which is something that Don did. And when I came back, we had some AD receptions and it would be down at his place and those kind of things.

And it just to hear the stories from him of how he built it and what he focused on and how he hired coaches really gave me a lot of balance if you will and know that you have to think through the right steps and then move forward and make the decisions you need to make try something if something doesn’t work keep trying I mean he was he was a master marketer I mean he was the first really ad who focused on marketing institutions the way he did and he’s really the father of collegiate athletic marketing and so to sit and listen to some of his stories were just really helpful and resonates with me we’re going to talk a little bit about the changing landscape but when you go back to Don Canham’s time ESPN was getting started yeah tele back before that you might watch one or two Michigan games a year.

Yeah. And then they were starting to get some more coverage and they were, like I said, ESPN and they wanted to broadcast more and Don was kind of a leader in that area. We’re going to get down a little bit later and talk about how it’s changing landscapes of college athletics fell upon you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, we’ll get to that there. So then you do your time here a little bit, you get a job as the athletic director at Buffalo, right?

Right. Right. And at Buffalo, you go there and you get the football coach you were looking for, Turner Gill. Yeah. Right. Former quarterback from Nebraska. Correct. Right. And we watched when we were growing up, right? Yep. In high school. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of the teams that was on TV more than phenomenal was those Nebraska teams of the 70s which remarkable. 70s and 80s. Tom Osborne. But then you also doubled the athletic budget in your wasn’t a long I think was it seven years or something?

Six and a half. Six and a half years Buffalo, but you more than doubled the budget. Yeah. How did I mean this is your first gig. This is your first big time job. How did you do that? Well, I had a I had a great president and then with success, people want to buy tickets,? I mean, it this kind of works that way. Pretty easy marketing. Yeah. I mean it’s so great staff but great president great support great donors but as we started to win and have success people started to support the program at the level of which to continue to grow to continue to stretch to be a championship level program across the board but specifically in football And we were able to capitalize on that in a way that just kept helping us grow.

And so it was a great experience at Buffalo. I enjoyed my time there. We still have close friends there in Buffalo. Our kids were young at the time. My daughter graduated from high school there. Our son finished all the way through middle school. So I mean it was a really great time for us as a family to grow. But Buffalo was just a great place. But it’s a great community that really came out in strong support of the teams once we started to show success.

And when you show success, let’s like you said, everybody wants to be around a winner, right? Everybody wants to be around a winner. Exactly. And so you’re successful at Buffalo and then you get the job at UConn. Yeah. And it’s a step up, but you’re gonna go work with the biggest name in women’s basketball in Geno Auriemma. And if you want to base your AD’s success on just championships, then you’re Hall of Fame.

Yeah. Because while you were at UConn, you won five national championships. One with the men’s and four with Geno, right? And then two others with field hockey at the time. It was the first time field hockey had won the national championship. They had been there quite a bit. Seven national championships. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a special time. The I’m still friends with Jim Calhoun and Geno, two great men, obviously, uber talented and unbelievable coaches in their respective sports.

And Jim, shortly after I got there, had a bike accident and broke his hip. And then he was thinking about retiring at the time and retiring and I hired promoted Kevin Ollie to coach one year. He earned a five-year deal and then in his second year we won a national title. All of this going on while at the time the Big East was we separated from the Big East, started the American Conference.

All of this is going on at a, tumultuous time for UConn and what league we ran and those kind of things. And the success is even elevated because we got through those changes so well and came out of the other end so strong as programs. And so again, another great place. Still have great friends there. Connecticut Geno and I are still in contact with each other. So am I with Jim and Kevin as well.

It’s the foundation of great people who are working hard, who are motivated in the right way drive great success. And they those three and many of my other coaches along my career have epitomized that level of focus. Sure. And attention to detail, but caring deeply about the student. To me, that’s a great value again that I learned from Bo. I learned from Don Canham is you have to, care about the student athletes and at the same time push people to drive success along the way.

The difference in the culture at UConn and or similarities between UConn and Michigan. Well, I think the similarity is that both departments care deeply about representing the university in a highly successful way. The spotlight’s on you. The expectation to win and yet you keep driving through it and keep showcasing the fact that you can continually have success. Because that’s not only what the fans expect but that’s what the coaches, the student athlete, the staff expect.

The other thing is the focus it never has changed. There’s never been a president that I’ve worked for that has not wanted the successful combination of both academics and athletics success. And the schools are a little bit different but a lot alike in the sense that they want their student athletes to be students and athletes and do both at a high level. And so it was never a fight for me to push through.

It was something that it was a value to me. It was a value at those three institutions. And so for me it was easy to lead in that way. But you got you have great people who are focused on making sure that the they do everything as coaches and staff to help the student athletes to be great. Yeah. And that’s not something that you can fake. No. I mean people can see right there if you go in talking about hey we want good student athletes.

We want to promote academics. If you’re not 100% authentic in that and your actions don’t match your words, that falls on defines results don’t then results don’t come. Right. Right. That people read through it real quick. Easy. So in 2016 you’re named the 16th athletic director at the University of Michigan where your family had to have been just thrilled going back home to Ann Arbor. Yeah. Chris again your wife was an undergrad here so to campus.

Well, she went to grad school here. Yeah. Pardon me. Yeah. So, I know you’re not a self-promoter. Okay. And I know you like to praise your staff and the students and everything, but there are 27 varsity sports at Michigan. 29. 29 now. 29 varsity sports. There’s well over a thousand student athletes and we have a 96% graduation rate. Mhm. We could stop the We could stop the accolades after that. I’m not kidding.

Yeah. Yeah. I’m very proud of great won titles and there’s been 10 championships. But what? Just like you talked about earlier, that degree is what carried you after an injury and it will carry all of these people after their sports life is done. But that is a statistic that I think all Michigan fans and alumni are proud of and should be exalted. Yeah. Yeah. Good. The 80 Big Ten championships. What I counted 80.

I think you said in another inner maybe 80 between 80 and 90. Yeah. Something like that. All right. Four national championships of course football in 23, basketball 26. We have the men’s gymnastics and in 21, right? Winners gymnast plus a number of individual national champions. Correct. Right. Okay. Seven times Michigan finished in the top 10 of the Directors’ Cup. Yep. Okay. You were named the president of the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics, right?

Right. After being a committee member, you were named president. Was that 2021? 20, I believe. I think it was during COVID. During COVID 20 or 21. Yeah. So, speaking of COVID, okay, we’re everything went to hell in a hand basket and we had a $26 million deficit. Yeah. The following year, you dug us out of that. Right. Right. Okay. You’ve hosted international event, soccer events at the stadium. We’ve got concerts going on now.

But one that I don’t hear anybody talking about, but I think is just really a fabulous light on what you believe in and what you do was you helped develop the George Jewett Trophy. Yeah. For the game between Northwestern and Michigan. So why don’t you tell us about that? Yeah. Jo, it came out of a conversation with Jim Phillips at Northwestern and George Jewett was the first African-American student athlete who played football here, left here to go to med school at Northwestern and then played football at Northwestern as well.

And Jim and I got together and just thought we should have a game in his honor, a trophy game in his honor. Great idea. And it’s one of the special times to think about to come together in Northwestern and honor somebody who was truly the first in a category who did something at a high level at both institutions who represents, I love all of our trophy games, but this is somebody who represents both institutions.

He was, I believe, the first African-American player at Northwestern as well. He was the first African-American player in the Big Ten. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. You’re absolutely right. So, it was it was just a special time and a special u opportunity for us to get together. At the time of the game, the first game, Derrick Gragg, who worked here at Michigan with me in the ’90s, was athletic director at Northwestern.

And we were both African-Americans celebrating a game in honor of the first African-American in at both schools and the Big Ten to play. So, it was just truly a special time and something I’ll always mean a ton. That’s really and it’s it’s a great tr it’s two great schools, two great institutions. They both value a lot of the same thing and share this history which is truly historical for being the first black player in the Big Ten.

And I think it’s I really think that’s a great trophy. No, thank you. Yeah, it’s beautiful trophy. Yeah, it actually showcases him with a I think a football in one hand and a med medical bag if I remember the trophy in the in another. That’s fantastic. Yeah. So, we talked about Don Canham and how he was going through a new change in college football which is just really it was televised football games.

More of them. More of them. Happened in ‘ 84 I think the rule change. Jeff. So then you come in to the athletic director here at Michigan in a time that has been unprecedented change. Yeah. Most of it being NIL. And this is something that when you go back to our time and paying players was completely taboo. But wouldn’t let anybody give us anything? No. Including a bagel and cream. So, so from somebody that grew up in an era where it was just completely foreign to now there is rules that players can start collecting on their name, image and likeness, right?

There was one point where Jim actually said I think at the podium of a press conference that he believed the players should share in some of the revenue that Yeah. And I agree with and you agree with him, right? So you and Jim, have you talked about that prior to him saying something about players should be paid? We had talked about we had talked about it in a general sense. Yeah. In I believe it was 2021 the Supreme Court 20 or 21 decided on the Alston case where we could pay some academic bonus money to student athletes similar giving out rings and watches.

So it was like 5980 and I think it was around that time that all of this started u when the Supreme Court decided 9–0 against the NCAA, right? We knew that sort of opened up the potential for our student athletes to just start being paid and he and I talked about it and Michigan is a poster child for why student athletes should get paid. When you look at I used to say it used to be the Goodyear blimp footage over the stadium and it’s full and it’s got all these people and you see the kids on it.

Now it’s drone coverage, that is up the air. But when you see that and you see all of our fans, our great fans who are supporting our teams and there to cheer them on, particularly in the sport of football, we become a poster child. It’s the largest stadium in the country. Every game we proudly say it’s another game with 100,000 fans or more in the stadium and it we set records. They should earn as we do now a piece of that for their participation in the in that revenue sport and driving that revenue and so he and I were in agreement early on that this was good for college sport.

What about the administration? Now you worked for a lot of presidents like Yeah. Six presidents while you were the AD. This President [name unclear] will be the fifth president that I work for. Okay. Fifth. So that’s a lot in 10 years. I mean that’s a lot of a lot of turnover at that job. We need Yeah, we need solidified that. I think we have it with Right. So this is a new frontier.

What was the school’s position on NIL? Well, I think everybody was cautious about what it meant and what impact would it have on the flood. How will we be able to handle it? And we had a couple of years to ramp up to understand it to do the things that we needed to do to get to that level where we can deal with it effectively enough to run our 29 sports and to run the organization and do that kind of thing.

I think what has taken it and gone up exponentially is the growth of NIL collectives, those kind of things that threw it into another gear. Yeah. Of really focusing on how to maintain that, how to keep up with that level of competition and investment in our student athletes. And it’s evolved into what we’ve seen now with the Protect College Sports Act and passing in the Senate. Now, the House has to decide what they want to do.

So, it’s grown, but it’s something that look, this is this is Michigan. We want to be highly competitive in our sports. We want to compete at the high level. Our fans have been great. We’ve tried not to do it on the back of our fans, but the economics of college sports has changed because of it. And it’s really ramped up in the last two years is when we’ve been doing it. And so it’s coming at us fast.

We’ve adjusted. We need to continue to adjust. We need to continue to think of different ways to drive additional revenue to make sure that we have what we need to be successful and to have 29 sports. So you’re talking we’re talking about a five-year span basically from 21 to 25 26 we’ve gone from whatever those figures were now to or back then to a $40 or $50 million roster. Yeah. Do you feel like the do you feel like the horse has broke away from the cart and is running loose or I don’t feel like it’s running loose.

I just feel like it’s we started off thinking we were going to run a slower race than we’re running now. Okay. And now it’s a full sprint as opposed to a mile. It’s like we’re running we went from thinking we were going to run a mile to running a 400-meter in that time it takes or running a 200-meter dash,. So, it’s gone much faster than we anticipated ramping up to it.

Right. But we’re still in the race. Well, and I know that we’re doing our best to stick in the race and like you said, not tax the fans too much, right? Get donors or whoever and you have to be collective. But it just seems to me that to go from, maybe a million or two or four or five, whatever it was, to $50 million in a short time. Yeah. And you had mentioned the saving college sports acts and we’ve got conference commissioners and former coaches and you’ve got governors, senators, even the president of the United States Yeah.

Chiming in on the saving college sports act and how college athletics should be run. And the question is who the hell was in charge? Well, I think in many respects, you named a bunch of them. I mean the presidents, the ads, the commissioners are all trying to figure out the route to go that’s in the best interest of college sports. And I think ultimately that group has got a lead. The coaches are involved in football and basketball and other sports in terms of just trying to figure out I think everybody is focused on trying to figure out how to manage it and what is the best method what is that amount that we really need to run the programs that we have to compete what’s the fair thing for the student athletes right so I think everybody’s trying to think through it is this help with that.

I think it will. Yeah. I mean, I think we need some stability in what we’re doing right now. You have the NCAA trying to create or creating rules. You have the CSC, the College Sports Commission creating rules. You have states that are implementing, either temporary restraining orders are getting decisions made that benefit what happens in their states. You now just as recently as I believe two days ago the governor of Ohio had came out with executive order.

You have the president of the United States President Trump putting out an executive order about what should happen. So you have people that are trying to make a difference and it just needs to be a concerted effort and continue to think through what’s in the best interest of college to for the student athletes and for college sports. We’re talking about a lot of different levels of it’s a lot of involvement. It’s a lot of layers.

Yeah. And are all those layers able to get on the same page and get this thing ironed out where, hey, this is what’s best for the athletes. It’s fair for them. It’s fair for the schools. It’s puts everybody on a on an even playing field. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. But I think we’re we’re as close when the Senate came together and passed that a few weeks ago. I think the vote was 77 to 22 or something like that for and against it showed that with some work you can get you can get some agreement.

Mhm. And I think and that’s my hope with the House that there’s some way to get to some agreement to help stabilize college sports. I think save is a bit much. I get the naming of it. I think is fine, but I think it’s really to stabilize college sports so that we can move and benefit the student athletes while also protecting college sports and for all and it’s a it’s a hot topic.

Obviously, you hear about it all the time, but the fact of the matter is college football has never been more popular. It’s unbelievable. It’s just and college basketball. I remember a few years ago they were talking about how college basketball was losing an appeal. And I just don’t see it. I think it’s more exciting now than it ever has been. It is. And then you have women’s basketball that’s really starting to grow.

And then, you have all of these sports and you want all of them to succeed and you want all these players to partake and get a piece of the pie. But it there has to be some way to control and work this thing out. And I just I question whether or not, from the president to senators to governors to can they all get on the same page. Well, I don’t debate that for a long time.

We will and I think the answer is we’ll never have unanimity. Mhm. We’ll never have that. People have different perspectives and you bring that to the table. Is can we structure it and sculpt it enough that people will see the you got to give a little bit on both sides to get to the middle in terms of what’s what’s good and can we get to that point where people come off of their strong perspective and get to a middle ground where we can operate.

Okay. And I think we will. I’m very hopeful. You see in 10 years you see a big change. I’m hoping it’s sooner than that. Good. But something’s got to give. Good. Another highlight in your career here at Michigan. You hired Dusty May. Yeah. Good job. Thank you. That’s two coaches that you hired within a reasonable amount of time to pick and choose the coach you want. Yep. And that coach wins national championship basketball.

Excellent job there. Right after the game, the national championship game, you said we have a contract. Yeah. Dusty says that everything’s, everything’s agreed on in principle. All we just need to do is get the i’s dotted, the t’s crossed, and whatnot. Time goes on, it doesn’t happen. Do you ever get concerned that there was something brewing on the sideline? Not necessarily. I wasn’t concerned and didn’t anticipate him leaving and going for the offer.

Dusty was on and I’ve been I’ve lived through this in my time in and you kind of my time here a little bit with Jim, but coaches get pulled in a gazillion directions after winning it all. The, he was going to coach of the year. He was on the road recruiting, he was going to different things and speaking engagements and different awards he was receiving. So, he was pulled in a million directions.

Matter of fact, after the game, I think I saw Dusty once until we were at meetings in Tyrana with the Big Ten. And I got a chance to spend, two or three days and everything was fine and we were working through it. And he called me one night and he said he had received a call and he wanted to have a conversation, with him. And two days later, 3 days later, we were sitting in my office and I was trying to do my best to talk him out of it and really get him to see what I thought was his value to college basketball.

So for me, I just thought Dusty was and still is a tremendous coach and person, but a tremendous leader of young people, young men in his case, right? And so, but I understood, his, desire to go to the pros, the opportunity in front of him with Cooper Flagg and, once he came back and thought about what I had talked to him about, it said he wanted to take this offer at Dallas Mavericks, I shook his hand, thanked him for coming, and I wished him the best.

I want him to be successful. A matter of fact, at some point in the spring, I’m going to go to Dallas and go to a game and hang out with him and drink and see him. And so, for me, I wanted him to remain here. U, but I also want people to do what they want to do to be happy. And I’m extremely glad that he came to Michigan. I’m extremely happy that he did what he was able to do.

Sure. And so for me, having him here and leave is disappointing, but having him here was one of the one of the joys of my career. Well, and you did a great job along with John Beilein to get him. I mean, this was a great hire. Yeah. It was a team effort. Yeah. And if you went out and got this guy, he wins the Big Ten tournament his first year and the national champion in the second year.

Yeah. You can be upset or disappointed that he left, but you got to be grateful for what he gave. Oh, 100%. That’s that’s sports. Yeah. And I was happy that John took up my offer to come and meet and spend some time with Dusty. I think it was very helpful because at the time, if you remember, the criticism was Michigan’s hard to win because you it’s hard to get kids in school.

And so, yeah, John was very helpful in getting Dusty to understand that he could build championships here and he can get kids in school and Michigan will do a great job supporting his team academically and so I just thought I was so happy when John agreed to take my offer to be a part of that conversation with Dusty and the rest is history. Yeah. And it was a great history and like I said we should be happy for the 100%.

And don’t be, there’s, you obviously have critics. We all have critics, man. And you cannot possibly please everybody. And I always laugh at the ones that would say, well, war just didn’t do enough. It’s like, do you not think that guy had a his own idea and opinion about what career he wanted? I mean, what am I supposed to do? Put them put coaches in handcuffs and chain them to the to their desk and chair?

I mean, people have an extreme misunderstanding about my desire to keep Jim and keep Dusty and to keep some of these other coaches that, they want to blame me for their departure. And I try not to fight it too much, but I do respond periodically. I had a guy yelling at me that, I let Dusty go. I go, “Really? You really believe that?” I mean, this is it’s it’s just nonsense. The same thing with Jim.

After I kept him when everybody told me I should fire him and I kept him and then he leaves and then all of a sudden I didn’t want him around. Like, I mean, are you kidding me? Well, in fact, it’s not. I was talking to former teammate of mine this evening before I got here and I said, “You’ve actually batted 750 for Jim cuz 2020 you kept him around. 2021 he was looking in the NFL, came back. 2022 he was looking in the NFL.

So you got him back three times, right? Exactly. It’s just the last I kept him once, got him back twice. Yeah. So, yeah, that’s a that’s a Hall of Fame batting average. Yeah. Listen, a guy that had bounced around a little bit, listen, man, he’s an awesome coach and he’s a great coach. I hope that he can he can pull out of it this year cuz that’s not he’s I’m sure he’s not having fun.

So, we talked a lot about the highlights, right? And then there was some lowlights of course, some unfortunate things, some things that just, doesn’t look good on our resume. And I think the one that’s most notable is the whole impermissible advance scouting. When was the first time you heard those words said to you as an allegation? When I got a call, we got a call from the NCAA. From the NCAA called you.

Okay. And so somebody they got information, they did a little bit of investigation. I suppose or whatever, right? So now you get the call. Now we got to talk to Jim, right? And I assume you’re because this thing blew up like wildfire and it’s all over the internet. It’s only thing everybody can talk about. And I got to believe you felt in the in the athletic department that you were under siege.

With all the attention and I got to believe the calls were calling from every news outlet in the country. Yes. Plus, I’m sure the president had a question. Plus, the regents probably had questions. So, you got to try and circle the wagons to do. Kind of walk me through those first few hours of this whole thing. Yeah. I mean, it hits you hard in the magnitude of what they said was going on.

It was just hard to believe that you were hearing about your program and just, you the first question is why, if this is true, why is it true? Jim said he had no knowledge about it. I believe him in terms of, his perspective and what he shared with me. He was floored by it. And then, we immediately worked diligently to get to investigating the issue and the accusation that was alleged on the call.

And them just kept working through it, and doing what we needed to do by the NCAA rules to investigate and look into it and, went through the process all the way through the hearing and, then we got the penalties. But yeah, I mean, it shakes you at a certain point to hear those level allegations against your program. But, we worked our way through it. We kept the student athletes, the coaches focused, made some decisions along the way based on the information that we had, whether it was staff or right or whatever we needed to do.

But yeah, it was a difficult period, difficult thing to deal with because it just had so many different things and so much of the information, was coming at us so quickly that we were trying to figure it out. Sure. The Big Ten and Tony Petitti hand down Jim a three-game suspension. Yeah. Beginning with that Penn State game in 2023. Y we had all heard and tell me if this is accurate, but we had all heard that we’re going to fight this and the athletic department’s going to fire a TRO.

Yeah. Or file a TRO, a temporary restraining order. Then at the last minute, that doesn’t happen, right? We didn’t file that. Didn’t get suspension. Why no TRO? University decided that it was better not to and based on the information that we had at the time and we couldn’t we couldn’t get it that day that Friday so we would have had to do it later in the week by that time Jim has served one game and it was a university decision that it’s best for not for us not to really and so would you have preferred to have fought a little bit harder?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. Great. Do you feel like Michigan’s the University of Michigan and Jim were treated unfairly throughout that whole process? I felt that We didn’t follow normal process and that was my biggest issue that we were before all the evidence was finalized and the process had worked out, we made a decision or the Big Ten made a decision to suspend Jim before the process and that’s not has not been a normal case of it.

Well, you justified that by saying it’s better to penalize them now, right? Get it out of the way and then let them continue the playoff run because if they delayed and waited till after the season, then that championship is going to be questioned by everybody for a long time. Well, yeah. I mean, I think there’s some in, some of our competitors who question it now. And I listen, it worked out, okay?

And I get Tony’s thinking about it. I just disagreed and I disagreed at the time. It doesn’t mean, Tony made the best decision that he thought he needed to make. It ultimately worked out where our team continued to have success and drive success. It almost it really almost motivated them in an additional way, right? But that being said, it doesn’t mean, my frustration with it, it was outside of the normal process.

We hadn’t done that level of suspension before. But in the end, from a from a competition standpoint, I’m proud of the student athletes, the coaches that they kept their focus and kept driving success and used it as a as somewhat of a motivating factor. The other part of the frustration is at the time, and I think they just recently changed the rule. At the time, if you were in the other divisions of sports, you could do in-person scouting.

It was division, our division, division 1A, FBS that had it where you couldn’t do in-person scouting. You could scout at another opponent in person if you were at a championship like basketball or you can go in the postseason in football and you can in-person scout but you couldn’t do I mean it was all set up to protect institutions financially. Now that being said it’s a rule so we shouldn’t have broken it.

I want to be clear that I’m not happy that we broke the rule, but there were so many factors to this as it related to at the time as you’re analyzing it and you’re looking into all the details, I learned more about sign stealing, not only in person, but in game experience than I ever wanted to never ever knew was going on. Right. And so you have all these things that are running through your mind as you’re looking into the issue that’s in front of you.

And that’s why I’m saying that’s why I disagree that we move too quickly. But again, it worked out. Tony’s a great guy. Except we still disagree on that. Okay. Did you say Tony’s a great guy? Yeah, he is. Excellent. I don’t know Tony, so I No, he is. All right. I don’t want to take up too much more time. I do want to ask about we just had this investigation of the athletic department.

All right. $12 million that were that would have cost. So that’s what I heard. Yeah. I don’t know the true number. What did you read in the final report? The conclusion an investigation findings. What did you read in that report? Did you read it? First of all, I was never given a report to read. I only saw what the university and the president put out. This is what I believe. 99.9% of the people in that department between the coaches, the staff, and the student athletes are working every day to do things the right way, right?

And that I didn’t allow it when it when all of these things happened. I didn’t know I fought and will continue to fight that this doesn’t define who we are as a department. And while our culture always needs to evolve and improve, you can’t have the success that you talked about early on, us having academically, athletically, on the fields of play, and have a bad culture. A bad culture would take that and minimize all of the goods.

Yeah. And really take that away. So for me the report in itself there are things that we could be better absolutely 100% we are not perfect but I don’t know a perfect organization I’ve never participated in a quote unquote perfect organization we could be better and we can get closer to perfection but as long as you have people do people make dumb decisions at times and the question is judging me and this department and the university on how do we deal with that?

Do we tolerate it? Do we sweep it under the rug? We’ve done none of that. We’ve dealt with these things and dealt with those people immediately and head on. And so for me, I hold my head up high because of the way we dealt with things and the way the staff evolved in the way we grew and the way we move forward continuing to drive success. Well, I know you won’t say it, but I’ll say it.

I think for you to not get a written copy of this thing is a crime, and it’s not I don’t think there was a written I think not having a written report is a crime. On top of that, this is Michigan. We pride ourselves, as James Earl Jones says, we respect tradition and we respect doing the right thing. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There should be a report. If there’s an investigation and this school paid for it and it’s going to end some people’s careers or change, then we have a right to see that.

I think I know you don’t have a say in that. No, I don’t. But I just think that as a public act for a public institution, one that claims to be the Leaders and Best, there should be a written report. Just my opinion. Got it. So, you’re going to retire. There’s going to be a new ad. You’re going to have a hand in this in the new AD. I will I will participate as much as President [name unclear] wants me to participate is what I told her.

She’s she’s got a job replacing several different executive officer positions. Athletic director is one of them. So, I told her as much as she wanted my help and advice, I would give to her. But I think she’ll be awesome for the University of Michigan. I think she’ll make a great choice and the best choice that she feels to lead the department. Greg, well, but I will not be selecting the next. No, no, you just go on and enjoy your time and I, I want the best for Michigan.

I always want the best Michigan and I care deeply like you do for this university and the success of our programs and I really like her. I like her as a leader and as a person and like I said, I’ve offered my help in any way that she needs to select the next person. I’m sure you will. I mean, there it would be out of character for you to not do that.

So, of course, you are. Warde Manuel is as much a Michigan man as there ever has been. His family’s Michigan guys. He’s done a great job for the university. Look at the accolades. Look at the graduation rates. Look at the trophy that we’re talking about. Look at what we’ve expanded. And I just think you’ve done a hell of a job. Yep. And happy to be your former teammate in I say me for a long time.

So those words mean a lot to me. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Thanks for coming. Thank you for having me. Appreciate Okay. We want to thank our sponsors of course Knight’s Steakhouse for hosting us tonight. We had a lovely dinner with Warde and his wife Chryslin and former teammate Dave Chester. This place is an excellent restaurant. We’re on Liberty here. That’s Maynard. They hand cut steaks, classic cocktails, really great environment and fantastic service.

OLIPOP, who’s been with us since the beginning. It’s good for you. It’s non-GMO. It tastes great. Do yourself a favor and drink a good pop that’s good for you. Valiant, our friends at Valiant, John Wangler and his guys over there get great merchandise, Michigan merchandise. Wear it with pride knowing that Valiant has contributed millions of dollars to the Michigan NIL initiative. So, patronize them because they’re great Michigan guys. And then, of course, Sheri Weintraub at eXp Realty.

Sheri is your A2 Homegirl. She knows Ann Arbor. She knows what it means to Go Blue. So reach out to Sheri Weintraub. Thanks for joining us tonight. If you like this kind of content, please like, share, follow, and subscribe. And as always, go blue.]