The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1412876
OCTOBER 2021 THE WOLVERINE 23 The Wolverine: What are your COVID concerns coming into this school year? Manuel: "Just looking out for people's health and safety. My goal was to get people here, student-athletes and staff, people around our student-athletes, vaccinated to keep people safe when they play. It turned out that the University, the president, made the decision to widen that. It's now up to 800-some universities that have some sort of mandate around learning and vaccination. "For me, it still goes to playing safe. Seeing if we can have fans, and right now, we're continuing to go down that road. It always has to be the health and safety of our student-athletes first." The Wolverine: What else keeps you awake at night about Michigan athletics these days? Manuel: "I have great student-ath- letes, coaches and staff that are working hard every day. We address the issues on a daily basis. We try to get as much sleep as we can, and then we wake up and do it again." The Wolverine: With the transfer portal, talk of conference realignment, NIL, etc., some older fans worry that it's the beginning of the end for college ath- letics. Your thoughts? Manuel: "College football has been changing since the late 1800s. It's col- lege sports, particularly college football. There was a cheating scandal, there were the deaths that occurred, there was the creation of the NCAA in 1905 because of that. "People were dying on the field of play, and people were cheating. The Big Ten came about shortly before that. Then Chicago left, and Michigan State came in. If you go through the history of college athletics, it's continuing to evolve like it began at the start. "There's turmoil, there are changes, there are rules, there's oversight that comes into play. In other words, the more things change, the more things stay the same. It just depends on what people mean by, it's not the same. "In 1984, there was a lawsuit and the Supreme Court decided that the NCAA couldn't control television. Then it went to the conferences. I don't know when people were living, who say, well, it's different! "It is different. It changes. But we have good people across this country that are working to figure it out, to the benefit of the student-athletes, the universities, the people involved, to try to continue to pro- vide a great education, first and foremost. "Ninety-five, 96 percent of our stu- dent-athletes here at Michigan are not going pro in sports — it's still the best commercial the NCAA ever had. So my goal is not to turn into a professional sports organization. My goal is to main- tain athletics under what this University is about — teaching and preparing young people to go out and impact the world in different ways. "They participate in sports, and that adds value, in my opinion, to who they are when they go out into the world. Even those that we prepare and then get a chance to play professionally, the averages are so low that it really doesn't make sense for them to major in pro sports. "With all due respect to those who say it's changing, and those who say it is get- ting worse, the people that are in here, that are involved, are continuing to try to do exactly what we've been doing for us since the late 1860s, when we started in- tercollegiate athletes here. That is to pro- vide a great education to young people, so that when they're done and they graduate from the University of Michigan, they'll go on to do great things in the world. "That's my goal. That's what I do. That's what we've always done. These iterations of different things have hap- pened around us, and we continue to do that. That's where the focus is going to be." The Wolverine: What are your best hopes for this department and Michigan athletics in the coming year? Manuel: "I want everybody healthy and safe, and that we win far more than we lose. Not for me. For our student-ath- letes and our coaches, who are working really hard to do that and have that level of success. "I would love to see it, and continue to see our teams have that success on the fields of play, in the pool, on the mats, in the lakes when they're rowing, to con- tinue to have that success. They work so hard at it. They've put blood, sweat and tears into it, in order to try to make that happen. "That's what I'd love to see — healthy and safe, great academics that we al- ways have, and great success in all the sports." ❏ Bev Plocki directed the Wolverines to their first NCAA championship in women's gymnastics last winter. Michigan became only the seventh school ever to capture the sport's crown. PHOTO BY MORGAN ENGEL/NCAA PHOTOS VIA GETTY IMAGES