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A new Wall Street Journal investigation has revealed that Michigan athletics director Warde Manuel and other university officials received multiple warnings about former head football coach Sherrone Moore’s relationship with Paige Shiver well before Moore was fired in December, directly contradicting the university’s portrayal of his dismissal as a swift response to newly discovered misconduct.
The findings come from Jenner & Block, the law firm the university hired to investigate the culture of the athletic department. Per the WSJ report — great ready to read that a lot in this article — the law firm concluded the school’s response to the allegations was insufficient and it was not clear who was handling reports of wrongdoing within the department.
The university has not made the report public, and as of Tuesday, July 14, they have no intentions of releasing the findings, according to MLive.
Perhaps the most damaging detail in the WSJ report is the timeline of the situation. Two days before the 2024 season opener — before Moore had coached a single game as Michigan’s head coach — Manuel had reportedly raised concerns with Moore about his close relationship with Shiver.
“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, per the WSJ report.
More than a year passed between that note being written and Moore being fired for cause. During that time, Jenner & Block found that multiple additional allegations had surfaced: a report of Shiver acting inappropriately in Moore’s office, a hotline complaint received by Manuel directly, and a report made by Shiver’s own father to university officials about Moore’s emotional state. The university was also aware of Moore’s online interactions with a donor’s wife, who had posted “provocative photos on her Instagram account,” per the WSJ.
Despite all that, Moore remained Michigan’s head coach until this past December, when Shiver reported her relationship with Moore to university officials.
The report also details how their relationship developed. Shiver began working for the football program as an intern in Nov. 2021. Just one month later, Moore messaged her on Instagram. Their physical relationship began in Jan. 2022 on a recruiting trip in Colorado, according to the WSJ report.
“That summer, Shiver had an abortion and told Moore that she went to a hospital to be treated for postpartum depression, according to the firm’s findings,” the WSJ report reads verbatim. “She texted Moore about Michigan’s head coach at the time, Jim Harbaugh. ‘Mr. Harbaugh helped me get into the head person here,’ she texted Moore. ‘Don’t worry he doesn’t know everything and won’t[,] just knows I’m not well.’”
Moore drove to Shiver’s apartment the day he was fired. Shortly before he did that, Manuel — per the WSJ — sent him this text message: “Sherrone please don’t do anything to harm yourself. You can get through all of this.”
Despite all this, Manuel is “confident” in the work he has done as the athletics director at Michigan, he told Sam Webb on 1050 WTKA-AM on Tuesday morning, several hours before the WSJ report was published.
“I do feel confident in the things that I have done here at Michigan,” Manuel said. “Not for me, not for Warde, but on behalf of the University of Michigan, our student-athletes, our coaches, our staff, our fans, our donors. To drive success with our student-athletes academically and athletically. And I think if you look at the things that have been accomplished over the last 10 years that I’ve been here, I’m very proud of what we’ve accomplished. And so for me, I continue to do the job, Sam, and I continue to do the best that I can do for the University of Michigan and this athletic department.”
Beyond the Moore situation specifically, the Jenner & Block report highlighted broader compliance failures within the athletic department. Per the WSJ, the law firm found that the university had failed to implement certain recommendations from a prior sexual misconduct review.
It also noted that Michigan’s athletics compliance officer reported directly to Manuel rather than to the university’s office of general counsel, a structural issue that raises questions about the independence of the department’s oversight mechanisms. The university’s general counsel, Timothy Lynch, announced last week that he was leaving for the same position at Stanford, adding another layer of institutional uncertainty at a critical moment for the department.
Shiver filed a lawsuit against the university last week, accusing it of withholding public records related to her relationship with Moore. Attorneys for both Shiver and Moore have called on Michigan to release the full report publicly. A university spokesman told the WSJ that “keeping the investigation documents confidential preserves the integrity of the process and protects the privacy of participants.”
The WSJ report arrives at an already turbulent moment for the university’s athletics department. Manuel is facing intense scrutiny over his handling of matters of the years. From the Connor Stallions sign-stealing saga to the Matt Weiss federal indictment to the LaTroy Lewis sexual assault investigation and many more in between, this report adds another significant chapter to the novel-long list of controversies over the years with Manuel as the athletics director.
The central question raised by the Jenner & Block findings is pretty straightforward to me: if Manuel knew about the Moore-Shiver relationship as early as Aug. 2024, why did it take more than a year — and a formal complaint from Shiver herself — for Manuel and the university to act on it?
That question does not have a good answer right now. And until Michigan releases the full report publicly, it is a question that will continue to define Manuel’s complicated legacy.
Stick with Maize n Brew as more developments are made public.
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