The University of Michigan is too compromised to even give the appearance of doing the right thing.
Last week, the school released a summary of Jenner & Block’s investigation into the athletic department, which focused both on Sherrone Moore and the overall culture of the department. The school spent several million dollars commissioning the investigation.
We will never know the specifics of what they found.
Almost certainly at the request of the university, Jenner & Block delivered the full findings of their report to school leadership orally, ensuring that endeavoring journalists can’t obtain them via a Freedom of Information Act request. Their justification for this is, in a word, bullshit:
Why isn’t a report being released publicly?
Maintaining the confidentiality of the investigation protects the privacy of the members of our community who participated, promotes the willingness of witnesses to participate in any future investigations by allaying concerns relating to privacy or risk of retaliation, preserves investigative integrity, and protects the attorney-client privilege that covers the investigation.
The only people they’re protecting are school employees who committed malfeasance or ran cover for them. It’s standard practice to anonymize any victims or witnesses so they can’t be publicly identified. We’ve seen it with this very athletic department in another investigation, the one into Robert Anderson — but in that case, the people responsible for covering up the scandal were long dead.
Attorney-client privilege? The client is the University of Michigan, which it feels worth mentioning is a public institution. You’d be excused for forgetting that fact given how the school operates. This is more false justification for protecting the people who don’t deserve protection.
Photo: Patrick Barron/MGoBlog
The summary of Jenner & Block’s investigation, published by the school’s public affairs department, is heavy on equivocation and light on pertinent details. This is how the “Findings” section begins:
What were the principal findings of the culture review?
The culture review found that the Department of Athletics has many significant strengths, including a strong commitment to student-athlete success, competitive excellence, and academic achievement that includes a 96% student-athlete graduation rate. In addition, staff members spoke highly of the department’s workplace culture and 87% of employees who departed the University said they would recommend working there.
Objection, your honor. Irrelevant. This self-congratulatory misdirection shows exactly why we need the full report instead of a goddamn press release.
The rest of the findings, in short, maintain that the athletic department has strong values but didn’t maintain sufficient oversight of the football program. The only bit of real detail in the summary is extremely difficult to believe at face value:
What did the investigation conclude regarding Sherrone Moore?
The University terminated former Head Football Coach Sherrone Moore on Dec. 10, 2025, after establishing the fact of his undisclosed workplace relationship with a direct report, which violated University policy. Outside investigators did not identify any current University employee with direct, contemporaneous evidence of the relationship.
Why is that so hard to believe? Beyond having lived for longer than one (1) day on this planet, I read the Wall Street Journal report that notes multiple instances of Sherrone Moore’s affair with a staff member being mentioned to university officials as early as 2024, as well as this damning detail:
Two days before the 2024 season kickoff, athletic director Warde Manuel raised concerns with Moore about the coach’s close relationship with his executive assistant, Paige Shiver, according to the law firm’s findings.
“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.
None of that appears in the school’s summary of the report.
If you’re getting the impression the university is using the veneer of an investigation to cover up widespread culpability, you’re not alone. The former football staff member who had the affair with Moore filed a lawsuit against the school earlier this month claiming the university violated FOIA and HIPAA statutes, among other allegations:
Shiver filed a lawsuit Wednesday in the Washtenaw County Circuit Court stating that the University wrongfully denied public records requests for information related to Moore and his termination. The complaint also includes background facts claiming Shiver faced sex discrimination while working on Moore’s staff at the University.
“It was important for our client to file this initial FOIA lawsuit to ensure the truth and facts come out,” Andrew M. Stroth, Shiver’s attorney, said Wednesday.
Along with the records request, Shiver’s lawsuit claims punitive damages. Her team claims the University violated the Freedom of Information Act by denying requests made on Shiver’s behalf after Moore was fired. The lawsuit goes on to argue University employees violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act by illegally accessing Shiver’s medical records.
This wouldn’t be the first time UMich has circumvented FOIA, either with outright denial or astronomical fees. When several fans received mean late-night emails from then-athletic director Dave Brandon — a scandal that now feels quaint — during my time at MGoBlog, we had to find other means of verifying their existence. The relatively negligible consequences gave the school every incentive to violate the law:
I have been informed that Michigan erases Brandon's email regularly to prevent responsive requests by a person who worked in the athletic department for three years. …
This is why a specific request filed by an MGoBlog member turned up nothing. I have two FOIAs in with the department currently, one for six days of mail to and from two email addresses, the other for [email protected] and [email protected] dating back to January 1st of 2013. The department wants to charge me $385 for the first request and $1215 for the second—if those are at all proportional than there's approximately three weeks of email sitting there.
We found other means. We were not sued to oblivion by the university and Brandon was forced to resign, which suggests those means were legitimate — and likely the only way to confirm those emails were sent from Brandon’s school account.
On the same day the university published their summary of the investigation, it announced Warde Manuel will step down as athletic director at the end of the year. Despite overseeing the Moore scandal and a long list of other misconduct, Manuel will receive a buyout north of $7 million, along with continued benefits, and his personnel record will show he voluntarily resigned.
This, of course, was not the way or the time he planned to leave. Just a week prior to his announced resignation, he told Yahoo Sports he had no plans to step down.
That same week, interim university president Domenico Grasso called Manuel “one of the best athletic directors in the country.”
Then the school received the report. Given the about-face, it’s hard to imagine the summary gives a full, clear picture of Manuel’s leadership failures:
What did the culture review conclude regarding Athletic Director Warde Manuel?
The culture review found that Warde Manuel demonstrated important leadership strengths, particularly his commitment to student-athletes. At the same time, it identified failures to quickly and effectively act on allegations of wrongdoing by Athletic Department employees.
In a brief statement after the announcement he would step down, Manuel said Grasso requested he remain at his post “to implement the recommendations for continuous improvement.” Manuel’s track record shows there are few people less qualified to do so.
The institutional rot at Michigan isn’t limited to the athletic department. It hasn’t been long since sexual misconduct ended the U-M careers of former university president Mark Schlissel and provost Martin Philbert.
More recently, sitting regent Jordan Acker ended his campaign for reelection after The Guardian and other outlets published a series of vile, lewd messages he posted in a Slack group chat about a Democratic party strategist and a former Michigan student. Acker was elected as a regent in 2018; the messages date to 2020 and 2021.
Through his lawyer, Acker initially questioned the veracity of the messages, suggesting they were fabricated, defamatory, and likely sourced from his primary opponent. The source of the messages was actually another member of the group chat. Acker conceded they were real and gave a half-hearted apology to his regent colleagues:
During a June 25 Board of Regents meeting, Acker issued an apology, but did not directly mention the inappropriate messages.
"I'm sorry to my colleagues on this board, I'm sorry to our students, our faculty, our staff, alumni and everyone who cares deeply about this university. I'm sorry for the distraction, disappointment and the pain that this situation has caused," Acker said while addressing the board.
"Regardless of legal outcomes, regardless of investigations, regardless of what anyone else concludes, I know that I failed my own standards."
Despite calls for his resignation from the Senate Committee on University Affairs, Acker — like Manuel — will remain at his post until the end of the calendar year, when his term expires. Regent Denise Ilitch accepted Acker’s apology and called the situation a “teachable moment.” Acker is 41 years old.
These are the people who oversee the athletic department, along with the entire rest of the university.
I’m fucking tired. Michigan has shown time and again that there’s no reason to trust they’ll handle their institutional problems seriously when covering their asses is an option. In doing so, they continue to endanger students and staff alike.
Will anything change under the next athletic director? With Manuel providing input on how to move forward, I can only assume the answer is a resounding No.
Photo credit: Patrick Barron/MGoBlog