Last fall, the department asked fans whether they’d support advertising in the Big House. Ads abound on sports broadcasts and professional venues, but here, Manuel says, the answer was an emphatic no. | Photo by Junfu Han–USA Today Network
Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel knows what everyone thinks of his school in 2025.
“We are one of the poster children for NIL,” he says. The term stands for “name, image, and likeness,” the 2021 NCAA policy that allowed college athletes to earn money from their personal brands.
NIL is causing upheaval nationwide, but Manuel, who played football for Michigan in the late 1980s, is emphatically in support. “My teammates and I all talk, and we would have loved to have gotten some” compensation when they played, he says.
Any doubts that Michigan could compete for top talent in the NIL era were quashed last year, when Michigan lured Belleville High School quarterback Bryce Underwood with an alumni-funded incentive package supposedly worth $12 million.
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But the AD contends that the ability to earn money “doesn’t take away from helping them grow as young people.” He says that’s been his focus since taking the job in 2016.
“Ninety-five plus percent of our student athletes are not going to play professionally when they are done here,” Manuel says. “So, if that’s the case, I’m not going to design a system for only five percent. I want a system that will help one hundred percent of them.”
Previously, universities could provide scholarships, but they were forbidden to pay students. Well-connected alumni sometimes stepped forward to provide internships or off-season jobs, but the big payday was supposed to come after they turned pro.
Now, colleges are facing a three-legged stool of obligations, says Aaron McMann, who covers Michigan football for MLive. “It’s constantly evolving. The rules are changing,” he says.
The first leg is to provide scholarships for every athlete. If a tenative legal settlement is approved, that will increase the tuition the athletic department pays to the university by $40 million a year.
The second leg is revenue sharing—essentially paying athletes to play, although they would not be considered employees. Manuel has pledged to “maximize” those opportunities, which will cost about another $20.5 million annually.
That’s why the department asked fans last fall whether they’d support advertising in the Big House. Ads abound on sports broadcasts and professional venues, but here, Manuel says, the answer was an emphatic no.
Instead, he scheduled the Big House’s first big concert: country star Zach Bryan will headline at Michigan Stadium on Sept. 27. Tickets sold out in thirty-six hours, and Manuel says the income “will help” fund the revenue-sharing.
The third leg is NIL money itself, or what student athletes can earn individually. Enter the Champions Circle, the university’s official collective that can distribute funds to athletes. It describes itself as “a community of fans, alumni and supporters whose goal is empowering University of Michigan student-athletes to be the leaders and best” through NIL.
Thus far, an estimated 11,000 donors have contributed to the collective, whose coffers have been boosted by events featuring former U-M football coach Jim Harbaugh and current head coach Sherrone Moore, and individual outreach to prospective contributors.
A year ago, Manuel hired Altius Sports Partners to coordinate NIL opportunities for athletes. Altius staffer Terése Whitehead now serves as executive general manager of NIL for Michigan Athletics.
Her role, she told Michigan Public, is to “advise the entire ecosystem on how to really maximize the work that they are doing and bringing some of those opportunities to student athletes.”
Sports experts believe that the leading university collectives can provide their schools with $15 million to $20 million annually, of which football will get the lion’s share, followed by basketball and then another sport, which at Michigan could conceivably be hockey, women’s gymnastics, or softball. In return for the money, the students now face daunting expectations.
“It puts pressure on the student athletes like never before,” McMann says. In the past, “these were five-star kids, four-star kids and that was the extent of the hype. Now you put a dollar figure on it.”
He goes on, “Wealthy people like to see a return on investment. It’s unprecedented what we’re seeing right now.”
For their part, student athletes want playing time and visibility, and if they don’t get it, some will opt to enter the transfer portal. Used in football, baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, and ice hockey, the NCAA database allows students to advertise their interest in changing schools during their years of eligibility.
The transfer portal means “coaches have to re-recruit their rosters every year,” McMann says. If athletes aren’t playing, “they can look for greener pastures.” And if they are standouts, they can see if another school can offer more, including NIL money.
That leaves Manuel in a far different situation than he faced when he was hired nearly a decade ago. But it’s clear that learning is part of his DNA.
Asked whether it’s okay to record an interview by phone, he asks the name of the app and seems intrigued that it will produce an emailed transcript. When the topic of management books comes up, Manuel reaches for his tablet to show the cover of Ego Is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. But he’s also into mysteries by James Patterson and says he always has multiple books going. “I’m a Gemini, I can’t read just one,” Manuel says.
His office leaves no doubt which school he’s leading: A life-sized stuffed wolverine, hairy pelt and all, sits next to his desk, decorated with Mardi Gras beads. On the wall facing his desk, a portrait of Bo Schembechler, for whom he played, has a place of honor amid photographs of every current Michigan NCAA team. There’s a signed picture of the U.S. Olympic men’s gymnastics team, which included two members from Michigan who trained a five-minute walk from his office. In April, U-M’s men’s team, including the Olympians, repeated as NCAA champions.
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Manuel first arrived in Ann Arbor from New Orleans as a freshman tackle in 1986, personally recruited by Schembechler, who came to his family’s home in the Seventh Ward. He was a star athlete at Brother Martin High School, an all-boys Catholic institution that is one of the city’s athletic powerhouses, and he always thought he would attend Louisiana State University up the road in Baton Rouge.
But Manuel’s late father, who had served in the U.S. Army, was impressed by Schembechler’s direct style, and his late mother, a school administrator, was pleased that he enjoyed her gumbo. The meal helped seal the deal, and a few months later a big shipment of his mother’s gumbo arrived at Schembechler’s house. The coach invited Manuel and some of his fellow players over to share it.
He played three seasons for Michigan. But in his senior year, he suffered a neck injury that ended his playing career, at times leaving him in tears of pain and frustration. However, upon graduation with a bachelor’s in general studies in 1990, Manuel embarked on graduate studies at U-M that led to his new career.
Manuel earned a master’s degree in social work in 1993 and an MBA from Ross in 1995. He filled several U-M athletic department roles, served as an associate athletic director from 2000 to 2005, then was athletic director at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 2005 to 2012. He was two years into the same role at the University of Connecticut when controversy broke out over U-M AD Dave Brandon.
The former CEO of Domino’s Pizza, who had served as a U-M regent, arrived at Michigan in 2010, bent on enlivening its national image. He focused on marketing and raising revenue, but he also angered students by increasing ticket prices. In 2014, a student petition circulated calling for Brandon’s removal.
After Michigan revealed that quarterback Shane Morris played with a concussion, students gathered outside then-president Mark Schlissel’s home, demanding that the AD be fired. He resigned in October 2014.
Immediately, Manuel became the leading candidate to replace Brandon, but his appointment wasn’t announced for another year, while a national search took place. In the meantime, U-M hired Harbaugh as its head coach.
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Football in Chaos
Harbaugh’s team won the 2023 National College Football Championship, but he endured multiple NCAA investigations, one of which is ongoing. Soon after winning the championship he returned to the NFL as head coach for the Los Angeles Chargers.
Many expected U-M to recruit a big-name coach. But fans clamored for promoting Moore, who had served as acting head coach during two Harbaugh suspensions, and Manuel gave him the job in January 2024.
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Moore’s team got off to a slow start the following season, prompting calls among disgruntled fans for Manuel to be fired. Manuel says he paid no attention: “I don’t make decisions off social media. I’m not going to let people with fake names and fake pictures have influence over me.”
The volume turned down once Michigan caught fire mid-season, ending the year at 10–4 and most importantly, beating Ohio State. The Buckeyes went on to succeed the Wolverines as the national college football champion.
Manuel admits that it was “disappointing” not to repeat as the nation’s top football team. “I don’t go into any season not thinking about winning championships,” he says. “It’s just my expectation that our coaches and our athletes are competing for championships and go into the off-season to develop themselves, to learn more skills, to get better and faster.”
Winning the NCAA title “was probably the number one thing that has happened in my career” beyond any personal accomplishment during his playing days. “You want to drive to that level of success where you can hoist the trophy at the end of the year and say you’re a national champion,” he says.
Michigan athletic directors have a history of long tenures. Fritz Crisler served for twenty-seven years, Fielding H. Yost and Don Canham for twenty, and Bill Martin for ten. By the end of his current contract Manuel will have been at Michigan for fourteen years, on top of his playing days, assistant coach responsibilities, and his time as a student.
He’s now lived in Ann Arbor far longer than he did in his hometown of New Orleans, and while he rules nothing out, he’s sunk deep roots here.
“I’m a Michigan man. This is what I want to do,” he says. “Did I come in with a timetable? No. I come in here every day, and I want to help us move forward for as long as I have the opportunity to do that.”