Michigan AD Warde Manuel exclusive interview: How he's navigating transfer portal era

This is the final part of the Free Press' exclusive interview with Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel. Here, he describes the athletic department's approach to the transfer portal, recruiting and NIL, and what he sees in his future as U-M's AD. This story has been edited for brevity.

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Garcia: The era of the transfer seems it’s not going away, so what do those discussions look like with the leaders of your programs and with admissions? We know you don’t want to be transactional, but how can Michigan sustain winning in this new environment? Because there was no transfer portal in the Fab Five, it is a different time.

Manuel: Well people transferred, it just wasn’t portal.

Garcia: Right, but immediate eligibility, and those things are different.

Manuel: That’s right, the new form of immediate eligibility. And there also wasn’t NIL out there encouraging people to make the decision to see what they can get.

Garcia: Those factors, not that things aren’t working now, but those factors seem to inherently work against the way you guys try to do things.

Manuel: But that’s all right. I’m not going to ask the university to remove the standards and expectations they have academically. I’m going to say to our coaches, as I have said, "we need to make sure that we’re seeing transcripts ahead of time," so that we can make sure we get the quick read to know whether or not that young man or woman can be here at the university.

Now, there can be other things in background and application that you find out about, but in a general sense, we have an idea looking at the transcript, in particular a transfer, and how many credits will transfer in right away.

PART 1: Michigan AD Warde Manuel exclusive interview: The hardest thing he has done in career

Then Steve Connelly and the staff — he’s the director of our academic support program — can do a quick read and take a look. One of the first things I say to all of our coaches, as soon as you can and preferably before somebody commits to us publicly, get us a transcript. Get. Us. A. Transcript. Even if it’s unofficial, then we can provide a read on whether or not somebody fits the requirements we have here at the University of Michigan.

In a general sense, it’s worked and worked to our success. But you have these cases that pop up. Again, two great young men, nothing to do with them as people at the time. So it’s just one of those things where it’s get us the information before a kid tweets out they’re coming. In those cases, their decision went out before we had some papers in our hands that said ‘whoa, let’s slow down and figure this out, because it’s one of those situations.’

So, you deal with different situations academically and different policies, things at the university that they want in place. Sometimes you have to figure it out and sometimes the answer is no, we’re not changing. OK, move on, go find somebody else.

I equate it to this, I know it’s a long answer, but I tell our coaches just because the kid has a 4.0 and the dean calls us from engineering and say "hey I think Tony Garcia, he’s a 4.0 student and a good athlete, I think he should be on the football team." The coach goes, 'yeah right, he didn’t play football' but you want me to take him?

In that sense, that’s what faculty and the university does. They say all right, I understand you’re a great athlete, but we have to understand they can be successful here as students. In general, the super majority, I mean the super-duper majority of our student athletes have been great students and great athletes. We haven’t had significant issues, yes we had Dug McDaniel happen this year, but that was a first since I’ve been here.

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'Capitalizing on the success'

Garcia: As you say, because he did leave this program on top, how can football capitalize on that momentum? And is everything in place from a recruiting and NIL structure to sustain that success?

Manuel: First of all, you have a leader in Sherrone who was part of the leadership of that team and drove a lot of that success. I do think we are situated in recruiting and NIL in a positive way. We’ve had great support the past few yers. You always want it to be better, everybody wants things to be bigger and better, but I think we’re in a very solid situation with NIL, our education, our partnership with the collective particularly the Champions Circle is able to do in both football and basketball.

I feel great about where were are and capitalizing on the success because in Sherrone we have somebody who was a big part of that. Kirby Smart, Dan Lanning, both were defensive coordinators and never coached a game before they started at Georgia and Oregon. Sherrone, I already watched him coach four. I have really good faith in what I’m getting, because I’ve seen it.

PART 2: Michigan AD Warde Manuel exclusive interview: Addressing Mel Pearson, football controversies

And like I said, he was part of putting it together. Two years in a row, we win offensive line of the year, and last year we were runner up. He put that line together, he coached that line. So it’s not like I’m getting somebody where I don’t know what they’re going to do. And in the era of NIL, he put that line together, Jim and him and the coaching staff put that team together and held that team together in different ways.

So, continuing to recruit and go after kids that, as Jim used to say, are team oriented, more about the team than themselves and want to push themselves to be great. But it’s more about the team than it is the individual, so for me, I don’t think that’s going to change and talking to Sherrone and hearing his vision for how he wants to build it, it will be consistent like that.

The future

Garcia: What else do you see as the future for this department? Sounds like women’s hockey could be coming soon?

Manuel: We’re doing a feasibility study that should be starting here in the next couple of weeks. We’ve had some conversations with consultants, talked with the NHL already, talked with another consulting firm to see and get a firm who can look at it as holistically as we can.

We’re going to look at it, study it and figure it out. Ultimately, it’s going to be about what it takes to do it. It’s not so much should we do it or shouldn’t we, the questions is what is it going to take? What would the needs be? How can that be measured against how the future lies?

But I’m looking forward to getting the results of that and trying to figure out by talking to the president (Santa Ono), the Board (of Regents) and giving them whatever report comes out of it to have a discussion about the future.

What's your favorite ring? 'The next one'

Garcia: How eager are you to get basketball back to where it was? After being so high, then, well you saw last year.

Manuel: Yeah, had a front row seat to it. But listen, like all our programs, I want us to have great success and it’s for one reason and one reason only — the student athletes. We recruit student athletes and talk about winning and competing for championships; so that for me is what this is about. I mean, the coaches and the staff too, don’t get me wrong, but the student athletes are doing a lot of the work.

I mean look, we’re working, we’re educating, we’re training, we’re watching film and doing all that stuff, I don’t want to take away from that. But when the ball is tipped, tossed, bell is rung, whistle is blown, whatever, it’s those kids putting it in.

So yeah, I want to see us win in a big way and get back to that consistency of competing for championship in the regular season and the tournament. I think, no I take that back, I know that’s what Dusty wants to do too.

One of the things that shocked me, you brought up those numbers (then we looked) and the Big Ten titles is in the 80s now, but here’s the stat that I love the most: 23 out of 29 of our teams have won conference championships (since I’ve arrived).

I didn’t know that, had no idea. Like, I keep the rings and — well now I’ve got a few more to put in there — but I wear them for a day and then it’s that big Johnny ‘what’s your favorite ring?’, ‘the next one’ kind of thing.

But that impressed me the most about the breadth about what our student athletes and coaches and staff are accomplishing here. Yeah, there’s hiccups along the way, there’s big issues, there’s small issues, there’s stupidity. There’s a lot of shit that gets in the way of all that at times; but to see the continuation of success that our coaches and programs are having, it means the world to me because I know how much it means to them.

But that breadth of it man, that blew me away.

Contact Tony Garcia: apgarcia@freepress.com. Follow him at @realtonygarcia.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan AD Warde Manuel exclusive interview: The transfer portal era