Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel was concerned about former football coach Sherrone Moore's improper relationship with a staff member long before the coach's firing, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.
Moore was terminated in December 2025 for violating university policy by having a relationship with executive assistant Paige Shiver.
A law firm hired by Michigan to investigate the culture inside the athletic department found that the school missed a major warning sign prior to Moore's
first game as the Wolverines' head coach in 2024, per the report.
Two days before the 2024 season opener, Manuel raised concerns about Moore's relationship with Shiver.
"I told him I didn't remember if we had already discussed, but that she couldn't accompany him on trips," Manuel wrote in a previously unreported note on Aug. 29, 2024, handwritten on Michigan letterhead.
The law firm of Jenner & Block's findings indicated that the physical relationship between Moore and Shiver began on a January 2022 recruiting trip in Colorado, when Moore was an assistant on then-head coach Jim Harbaugh's staff.
Allegations about a relationship between Moore and Shiver "surfaced repeatedly" beginning after Moore became the head coach in January 2024, including a hotline complaint received by Manuel and a report to school officials from Shiver's father, per the report.
Shiver reported the relationship to the university in late 2025, leading to Moore's dismissal.
Manuel, who was hired in 2016 and is under contract through 2030, is under fire for his handling of the scandal. ESPN reported Monday that the school's regents are holding a meeting later this week that could lead to his ouster.
Manuel reiterated Tuesday that he remains the athletic director at Michigan.
"I think I've been fired by social media three times in my 10 years," Manuel said on WTKA-AM, a local radio station. "I just move through it because, to me, it's nonsense."
He also defended the accomplishments under his tenure in Ann Arbor.
"I don't need the credit (for Michigan's success)," Manuel told The Michigan Insider, "but I'm not going to stand idly by and let people say all this happened despite Warde Manuel."
--Field Level Media
