Sherrone Moore grabbed two kitchen knives inside Paige Shiver's apartment and told her his blood was on her hands. That was December 10th, hours after Michigan fired him as head football coach for an inappropriate relationship with her. He'd driven straight to her place after learning the university knew.
Seven months later, the man who fired him is out of a job too.
Warde Manuel built one of the most decorated athletic departments in the country. A football national championship in 2023. A men's basketball title this spring. Facilities and revenue that made Michigan the envy of the Big Ten. None of it was enough to survive what came after that December morning, and multiple reports out of Ann Arbor this week say his exit is already settled, with the Board of Regents meeting Thursday to finalize the terms.
Moore was charged with felony home invasion, stalking, and breaking and entering. Prosecutors said he grabbed the knives and told Shiver, "my blood is on your hands," a line vivid enough that it will likely follow this case for years. A judge later reduced everything to two misdemeanors under a plea deal, malicious use of a telecommunications device and trespassing, and Moore walked away with 18 months of probation and a fine just over $1,300. No felony. No jail beyond three days already served.
Shiver didn't stay quiet about that outcome. "The University of Michigan gave this man limitless power and emboldened him to do whatever he wanted for years with no accountability," she said through her attorney after sentencing. "December 10th was the most terrifying day of my life."
That sentence is the whole scandal in miniature, and it's why Manuel's job is gone. Michigan brought in the law firm Jenner & Block to investigate, at a cost that Shiver's own lawsuit puts at $12 million, and what started as a review of one coach's conduct turned into an audit of the department's entire culture. Shiver's attorneys said in March she believes she wasn't the only one. Her legal team has since sued the university in Washtenaw County, not over the affair itself but over six separate public records requests Michigan denied, including her attempt to get the full investigative file and the emails sent to the tip line Jenner & Block set up. The university has declined to comment on that suit.
Manuel had absorbed turbulence before and kept his footing. He was athletic director through the Connor Stallions sign stealing scandal that shadowed Jim Harbaugh's final season in Ann Arbor. He was athletic director when former quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss was federally charged with hacking into the accounts of female athletes across multiple schools to steal private photos, a case still moving through federal court. He watched Harbaugh leave for the NFL after the 2023 title and watched Dusty May leave for the Dallas Mavericks this spring within months of a basketball championship. Individually, none of that was necessarily on him. Stacked together over a decade, it read as a pattern, and Jenner & Block's mandate was built specifically to look for patterns.
In May, at the Big Ten's spring meetings, Manuel seemed to already feel the walls closing in. "I always aim for steadiness," he said. "Believe me, this is not anything that I've desired or wanted or hoped for. But I deal with it." Two months later, sources say he's weighing retirement as a softer landing than a formal termination, a distinction that matters financially. His extension, signed in December 2024, pays him close to $2.4 million a year including deferred compensation and runs through 2030. A straight firing would trigger three years of severance, which is almost certainly why both sides are negotiating an exit rather than letting the university simply cut him loose.
Whatever language they settle on, the timing leaves Michigan opening the 2026 season with a new athletic director, a new football coach in Kyle Whittingham, and a new basketball staff, three of the most important chairs in the department turned over inside a single year, all of it tracing back to one December morning when a coach drove to an ex-girlfriend's apartment with knives in his hands.
Moore has probation until October of 2027. Shiver's lawsuit is still in court. And Thursday, the man who fired one and hired the other finds out exactly what his own decade in Ann Arbor was worth.