Warde Speaks on UM-ND Renewal

Per Brendan Quinn's Twitter timeline, Warde Manuel was on The Michigan Insider this morning talking about the ND series renewal. I'm sure the audio will be available in Podcast form soon, but for now some highlights:

- Negotiations were underway shortly before he arrived, started by Harbaugh and Kelly

- Says he's "hopeful" they can change the imbalance of the MSU and OSU games

- Says ND should be "consistently on the schedule. Maybe not every year..."

The last point makes me the most hopeful after the news broke yesterday (officially).

I'm really excited about our future series against Texas, Oklahoma, UCLA, and others and would really hate to see any/all of them canceled for the sake of playing ND. I'm glad to see ND back on the schedule, but we need some variety when it comes to playing strong non-conference opponents. I know if we schedule ND in any given year that's likely to be the only interesting non-conference game we play that year with the move to 9 Big Ten games.

https://twitter.com/BFQuinn