Warde Manuel opens up on hiring new Michigan football, basketball head coaches in same cycle

Warde Manuel went out and hired two big head coaches this cycle for Michigan: Sherrone Moore for football and Dusty May. 

It’s not often an athletic director has to fill the position of the two biggest sports on campus. But with Jim Harbaugh off to the NFL and the school parting ways with Juwan Howard, Manuel couldn’t afford to miss.

So, he promoted Moore to football head coach and grabbed May from Florida Atlantic.

“A little hectic,” Manuel said when describing the offseason for both sports. “But ultimately great because of the results. But it was time consuming. You never think you’re gonna be in a position to have to hire both and appreciate Jim and everything that he brought to the table and had a chance to see Sherrone in action as a head coach.

“He did great then, did great in conversation with me and so that was easier in the sense because he was right there. And I knew I was really interested in him. But he had to earn a job and he talked through it and did an excellent job.”

As far as Michigan bringing in May, Manuel had to work pretty hard in a broad search. He wanted to give Michigan basketball a fresh star.

“Dusty was different, because it was a search that I didn’t have an internal candidate,” Manuel said of the Michigan basketball search. “And I knew I was gonna make it broad but it worked out great because from the initial review, he was a person that I wanted to target based on his success at FAU, the things that I’ve heard about him. 

“(And also) having personal friends who had worked with him and just knowing all of the things that I wanted in the next head coach for men’s basketball, he really, again, every time we talked about it with him or somebody about him, it just made it more and more that he was a person I was interested in it. It worked out.”

Moore proved he could work at Michigan by not losing a game in Harbaugh’s absence due to suspension. Plus, the familiarity with the program was key to him staying in Ann Arbor.

After initial success with Michigan basketball, Howard faltered in recent years. But a coach like May, who took FAU to the Final Four, has more resources at his disposal for a successful tenure.