The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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OCTOBER 2025 ❱ THE WOLVERINE 19 The Wolverine: Football obviously went through some dramatic changes over the past year. How do you view the transition from Jim Harbaugh to Sherrone Moore as the head coach? Manuel: "You never know how well the transition is going to go. In this case, I had watched Sherrone coach four games in an interim capacity and do very well at lead- ing and making the key decisions at the appropriate time for the team. I felt very good about it. I felt very good about him understanding Michigan, understanding the team and the young men on the team. We had some other transition with staff, and I thought he had a great plan when I interviewed him. "I thought he did an exceptional job last year, and he's continuing to grow as a head coach this season. I watch how our coaches grow and try to be there, answer any questions and help if I need to help. "I'm impressed with Sherrone's growth as a head coach, and his ability to handle not only the football side of it — the re- cruiting, the staffing, the game planning — but all those things outside of the X's and O's of the sport, the practices and the games. He's really blossoming as someone who is showing that breadth of knowledge around compliance, academics, media, development. He's really doing a good job of developing and understanding his own way of doing these things. "I've been really impressed with how he's handled everything. His leadership last year was really shown, given the fact that we had some difficult times in the middle of that season. To finish the way we finished just showed his leadership and his guidance of those young men, his coaches and his staff, to stick together and really keep them together. That's leadership. "It's easy to give leaders credit in great times, when things are going well. But it's really those difficult times when you start to see true leadership, and I think it's re- flective of how well he led that team, how well we finished that season. "I want to give him a lot of credit for how he continued to lead through adver- sity. It really highlights how well he led the team last year, and I think he's doing an even better job this year." The Wolverine: The NCAA decision and punishment came through, w i t h s t ro n g p u s h b a c k f ro m Michigan in terms of an appeal. Some from the outside looked at that and said, 'Hey, no vacated games, no postseason punish- ment, no taking away of the na- tional championship — why not just take it and move on?' How would you respond to that kind of thinking? Manuel: "We have appealed. We have a right to an appeal. I've spoken about this idea of us still, in the NCAA, having this feeling that someone can get the death penalty or a postseason ban being ridiculous and where we are. There's no league or other organization that has that threat against one of the entities that are participating in that particu- lar sport. I did comment on that, be- cause I do think that needs to be what we consider as it relates to punishment for something that happened two years ago, or in a given year. "That being said, we're going through the appeal, and I'll reserve any com- ments until we go through this process." The Wolverine: We've seen things surface regarding the origins of these accusations. Do you think we'll learn any more through this process? Manuel: "I've seen that, but I have no comment on that." The Wolverine: After the 2023 na- tional championship, the NCAA president himself declared the title to have been won "fair and square." Do you have any doubt whatsoever that is the case? Manuel: "No doubt whatsoever. I 100 percent agree with what he said. It's ab- solutely true from my perspective. Any- body who thinks otherwise is just sadly Manuel talked about the thrill of the U-M men's gymnastics program winning the NCAA championship and how special it was for the team to accom- plish that feat in front of a home crowd at Crisler Center. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN PHOTOGRAPHY