Warde Manuel Appreciation/Apology Thread
I'm one of many people who has roundly criticized Warde Manuel around these parts. But after his deft ability to woo Dusty May - using Known Friends and Trusted Agents like John Beilein, Charles Ramsey, etc. - away from every other program vying for his services, he deserves due credit.
History will tell whether his decisions these past few years will bear fruit for our major sports programs, but for now: Warde, sorry I doubted you. Take a bow.
nice job warde on this hire... made the right change, ran the process right and got the result
now go enable the program to be successful
Nope.
Nice Try, Warde.
Deserves credit for cleaning up a mess of his own making?
I mean...isn't that...like....his JOB?
We have to apologize for and appreciate someone doing their job now. That's where the bar's at, I guess.
He did a good job with this hire, by all indications. And it's always genuinely encouraging when someone stops digging and actually puts a few shovelfuls of dirt in the hole they've made. Let's be fair: a LOT of idiots just keep digging until they're fired (see: Dave Brandon). So, he got the memo. But he's working his way from pretty far back, so I'm not throwing caution to the wind and trusting he has a spine the next time the B1G or NCAA goes on a stupid witch hunt, just yet.
I mean, what more could the guy do here to get you to applaud the job he did? Honestly, it seems like AD’s get all the blame when things go wrong and none of the credit when they go well.
I think you're missing the point. Dragonchild is giving kudos for the hire and the timely-ness of it. He cannot overlook the past transgressions, at least not yet. Time heals all wounds.
Well, track record heals wounds. Manuel will have more opportunities in the future to show he's turned things around.
But I don't worship him like a god, so I'm being shoved into the "irrational nihilistic Warde-hater" bucket.
How exactly was this a mess of his own making? Last I checked, Juwan cratered the program, not Warde.
Beilein left incredibly late in the cycle, meaning all of the top college candidates were off the board. Juwan Howard was universally lauded as the top candidate. Years of experience as an NBA player, considered a fast rising coach among the NBA ranks and cut his teeth as an assistant under arguably the best coach in the league.
Juwan was the right hire at the time and the success was there initially as well. Now that it’s not, Warde moved on from him in a timely manner.
If this is like "Whose Line is it Anyway" where the points don't matter, Warde gets 5000 points for this signing.
sure, but he was in bolivia, down about 20,000 points.
It's like those episodes where Drew started throw crumbled $100 bills at people. It counts for something but barely.
Warde may have done well on the hire (time will tell), but if it's true that the powers that be forced Warde to fire Juwan, then I'm not sure how much credit Warde should get for the overall transition.
I'm still of the opinion that Warde is a mediocre athletic director who is unable or unwilling to adapt to college athletics' changing landscape. And for that, I refuse to appreciate or apologize to Warde Manuel.
Ain’t no one above Warde force him to fire Juwan. It was evident Juwan was getting fired just most(insiders especially) couldn’t let the season finish out. Warde handled exactly how you should especially with a high profiled alum who is getting canned
Firing Juwan gets Warde zero bonus points. It was a complete no brainer. Handling it "exactly how you should" is also called "doing the basics of your job correctly". No points for that either.
Ok no points. But when you have fake “he doesn’t do the job” that has been created you get threads like these.
Read the Sam Webb article, Rufus. it sounds like Warde did a fantastic job on the hire
Read my post, BoFan. I wasn't talking about the hire.
I don't understand the Warde opinion see-saw. He's extremely risk averse, but has lots of resources. He's not a bad decision maker when circumstances force him to make a decision, but generally he'd rather wait and see. Once he was forced to act on Howard, he moved quickly to hire the highest profile replacement he could get.
His tactics have never been under question, it's his strategic vision that remains a concern.
He is not going to act impulsively, unlike some of the fans, and shoot first, ask questions later. He will act rationally. That’s the only reason he was able to keep Harbaugh around the last three years.
Shoot first is usually a bad idea unless the other gun is drawn ready to fire.
Michigan has one true money making sport among the very elite in this country! Warde will be continually judged by Harbaugh’s departure! No two ways about it. He will also be judged by Moore’s tenure as hc.
May could be a great hire or a misfire but it’s the football program that better be right!
I think it's fair to say Warde defied some (low) expectations, but I'm not sure this erases the own goal that was the Pearson saga.
Also losing Sanderson was another own goal. We have to see how May actually does here. Rich Rod was a hot name too. I'm a little bit cautious about May given that FAU wasn't as good this year with largely the same players as last year. It's easy to pump up the guy until you actually see what happens on the court.
He's a good scapegoat for anything that goes wrong in the world. Your McDonald's fries are soggy? You can always blame Warde.
I'd have to observe him in his day to day role to have an educated opinion on how he handles his responsibilities. Rumblings on the internet never paint the full picture.
Also complete lies especially from guys like Balas. I’d even throw JUB in there but he has more tact to play the middle.
JUB has an subtle anti-Warde agenda and his tweets has been bad tbh.
JUB just gerbil’d his way up Jim’s ass like he did Bo
My theory is JUB tried to woo Warde into being a confidant so he can continue to have inside access and Warde said no thanks which pissed him off. There is a reason why JUB hasn't had anything of substance as of late.
I don't have much knowledge of Balas outside of what is posted here. Most "insiders" are full of shit IMO. Coaches aren't typically open about anything, so people that claim to have insider knowledge are usually just panhandling.
All those guys are fighting for more access and some have very little. The agendas by some are nuts right now
I've really been a bit puzzled by the Warde hate. I don't particularly have strong feelings one way or the other about Manuel. He is ok to pretty good-ish? I thought his statement as to sign-gate was pretty strong. I don't particularly think Harbaugh was negotiating in good faith as to his new contract so I did not really ding him there. I would have preferred he take a gander around the landscape before handing the job to Moore because I think it was fairly predictable that we were going to lose all of our assistants as well. But for the most part I like how the new staff has filled out. We did win the national championship, also, which did not suck. He got rid of Howard as he should have and made a good hire in hoops.
B.... maybe B+?.
You are not "puzzled"; you have VERY strong feelings about the Manuel hate. Much stronger than any feelings about the man himself. You claim to be tired of it but you reliably show up everywhere and bring it up, sometimes before it's even there.
The reason this bothers me, FWIW, is that I find you a decent contributor whenever you're not constantly bitching about the bitching. It's not the only thing you're doing, but you're always doing it. Feels like a waste.
Honestly man I think you have me confused with another poster. I rarely comment on the Warde stuff because I really don't care and think it is overblown and frankly boring. Trust me, I dislike myself for a lot of reasons, but commenting on the Warde stuff is not one of them because I never do.
Actually you know what, I think I do. Sorry mate!
All good.
You were probably thinking of GoBlu331. Or GoBlue156. Those guys hate on the haters 24-7.
March 25th, 2024 at 10:39 PM ^
Usernames that are variations of "Go Blue" have got to be the "Smith" of the MgoBlog world
Bearing fruit like ... winning a national football championship? Like ... that kind of fruit? Yeah. We'll have to see if that works out or not.
I mean he didn't hire the coach that won the national championship. That's like giving Warde credit for UConn women's basketball titles.
He retained him, though, despite really really loud demands that he fire him. You can't talk about his decisions involving head coaches and ignore that.
In fact, it seems like a lot of people are now claiming that it was so obviously the right thing to do that he shouldn't get any credit for it at all. But that's unfair — if we're talking about him not making the "right" decisions, but then exclude all of the decisions we think are "right," he's kinda screwed, no?
Congrats on winning the battle of dumpster fire programs, for the services of a coach who everyone knew was going to land somewhere. On a scale of 1-5 Jim Hacketts, I give him 1 Jim Hackett.
I'll give him the props he deserves for closing the deal and getting the top candidate, even though I was not all in on the fire Warde parade. Much of the criticism was well deserved. My biggest complaint was the lack of a backbone. He disappeared while our football program and head coach were getting raked over a burning fire.
I'm not sure this is a real complaint, looking back on it. He would have essentially been responding to muckraking reporters and opposing fanbase message boards. Not speaking about it played a role in delegitimizing it. We are little more than 4 months out from it and literally almost nobody remembers that it happened.
Or he worked behind the scenes to minimize the damage. We really have no idea.
I'm here for it.
Brian and Bacon hate him, so it's one big amplifier in these parts. On Wardes watch, we won many titles across many sports... he retained Harbaugh when most here wanted him fired, and even got a salary reduction. Hired Juwan, Sherrone , now May. The Pearson thing one can point to however, because I thought Muckalt should have been it. Argument was guilty by association and Muckalt was there and Naurato recently came on board, but was part of Pearsons staff nonetheless.
And Seth has been critical of Warde’s handling of NIL.
Yeah, but pretty much every fan base bemoans their team's handling of NIL. I have a friend who's an OSU fan, and he insists they're fucking up the NIL thing.
The echo chamber effect here convinces everyone that Michigan is somehow lagging behind, but that's just not true. Everyone's trying to figure out NIL.