The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
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22 THE WOLVERINE ❱ OCTOBER 2025 T h e Wo l ve r i n e : A ny co n ce r n s about college football nationally, with the big money, player move- ment, etc.? Manuel: "I'm concerned about the portal. I want kids to have opportunities to move, but it doesn't have to be twice a year in the fall sports. That to me is ri- diculous. A kid transfers from here, goes someplace else, plays in spring ball, then he transfers someplace else. The number one meaningful thing we do, no matter how much money we pay, is the chance to get a college education, and to be able to utilize that for the rest of their life for their NIL. "We know the more kids transfer, the less they graduate. Why would we keep having these windows every year? It drives me up a wall when I listen to a football game and they talk about, this is so-and-so's fifth institution. They were at this place and this place. Is that what we want for college athletics? "It doesn't bother me that kids transfer. What bothers me is that we don't give them time to develop. There's no more developing now. It's become, 'If you don't play me, I'm transferring.' There's always a school that will take them. I watch kids leave here, I watch kids leave other schools. They go to places where they think they're going to play, and they don't play there, either. "Had you given yourself time to de- velop into a football player at one institu- tion, it may have worked better for you. That's just the way I think about things." The Wolverine: Let's shift to bas- ketball. Dusty May obviously took Ann Arbor by storm last winter. What are your thoughts on his immediate success and what lies ahead? Manuel: "Remarkable. Had I gotten up and said — after we won eight games the year before — that I was going to find a coach who is going to have us leading the Big Ten at one point, competing for a regular-season championship, win- ning the Big Ten Tournament and going to the [NCAA] Sweet 16, all in one year, people would have gone to the president and said, 'You need to fire him, because he's lost his mind. He needs to go.' "I never put that on Dusty. I never said, 'That's what you need to do in this first year.' Matter of fact, I told him I want you to build it the right way, I want you to reestablish the program. I want you to drive success as best you can. But I never said to Dusty, you need to win the Big Ten regular season or tourna- ment or both. I never said that. "So, when I say remarkable, it's be- cause he turned it around much faster than I ever expected, based on where the program was when I hired him, and based on the fact that we had three re- turners on the team — one who started. "Looking back at how he has con- nected to his players over the years and how he built the program at FAU, his teams, how they were successful, you can see the threads of how to build it to have success quickly. "He can really get a team to jell to- gether quickly. I give him and his staff a lot of credit. I give a lot of credit to those young men — for their effort, for pulling together, for doing the things that Dusty is asking them to do, for his level of con- nection. He's a special person, and as great of a coach as he is, he's even better as a human, as a man, in the way that he connects with people, treats people, deals with people, brings people in. He's just wonderful. "To see him have the No. 1-ranked portal class doesn't surprise me, now that I've seen it. He has a great staff around him. He's really impressive, and that was a remarkable achievement." The Wolverine: There are coaches who have left college basketball because of the demands to dra- matically rebuild a roster every year. Do you think it takes a spe- cial mindset to pull that off? Manuel: "I think so. It's somebody who is adaptable. We brought in the No. 1 transfer class, but we also brought in some true freshmen who are going to make an impact on this team. That combination is what you do, because you need that growth. The retention he had from last year's team to now is another reflection on him and the staff and what to do and how to do it. "I give him great credit for really making that connection to these young men and having them seeing the value of staying with the program or coming here and wanting to help drive the suc- cess. They see in him and the coaches around him something that will elevate their play and will work to elevate the team." T he Wolverine: May makes his point with the officials, but he's certainly not the hair-on-fire, raging inferno we see at some college basketball venues. Your thoughts on his style? Manuel: "I hope he doesn't read this, but I thought there were a cou- ple of times when he should have been hair-on-fire over some things [laughs]. Maybe that's me having played for Bo [Schembechler]. I don't want to have him go Bobby Knight on people, which he's seen up close and personal — the world of Coach Knight and all the things he accomplished. "His demeanor with the team on the sideline and with the officials is really appropriate. He got one technical last year, and I was shocked that he did. He told me what he said, because I asked him. And I didn't think — given some of the other stuff I see around college games — what he said was worthy of a technical, but he got teed up. He'd gone on until the official had just had enough. "He has great demeanor not only on the sideline but with the team when I'm around at practice. He has a great way about him with donors, with colleagues ❱ Manuel, on how times have changed in college athletics "Now we're doing a scholarship plus we're doing rev- enue sharing, to provide student-athletes a portion of the revenue that they're working hard to drive. I don't lament it. … This is the right thing to do. It's something that we embrace here. … There's no looking back."