David Jesse, and Mark Snyder

Detroit Free Press

Connecticut athletic director Warde Manuel interviewed Wednesday with the University of Michigan to be its next athletic director and appears to be the front-runner for the position, two people familiar with the situation told the Free Press.

The two sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to disclose the information.

Jim Hackett, who has served as interim athletic director following Dave Brandon’s resignation in October 2014, announced in early December he would step aside and was not interested in becoming the permanent AD.

A committee has been meeting to review applicants, but Hackett told the Free Press on Wednesday night that the final decision on who to hire would be made by U-M President Mark Schlissel.

If Manuel, 47, is hired, U-M would continue its recent run of hiring former U-M football players to run the athletic department. Like Brandon and Hackett, Manuel played for legendary coach Bo Schembechler.

He suffered a neck injury during his junior year and his playing career ended.

"Bo was very good and the coaching staff was preparing us to go pro and obviously that was a goal of mine," Manuel told the Free Press in 2013. "But when it didn't happen, that was hard, it hit me hard and that was a very emotional moment for me to have to realize that I wasn't going to have an opportunity to play out my senior year, I wasn't going to have an opportunity to live out my dreams to be a pro football player."

Schembechler, assistant coach Tom Reed, athletic department counselor Greg Harden and even a defensive assistant named Lloyd Carr stepped in to help him.

"They didn't let me go away, they made sure I was doing what I needed to do to prepare myself for life," Manuel said. "They cared about me more than when I was just on the field, I felt that I continued to be a part of the family even thought I wasn't on the field."

He assisted in recruiting and remained a part of the team. Then, he was steered into athletic department management. He finished his bachelor's and got a master's degrees in social work and business administration at U-M. He then worked nearly a decade for U-M under three athletic directors and then became an athletic director at Buffalo from 2005 to 2012, before landing at Connecticut in February 2012.

He used his lessons from Schembechler in helping to guide his career.

"Trust your eyes, trust what you see," Manuel in that 2013 interview. "Rely on your senses and not on what other people say you should do and move forward and make the right decisions from there. That's one of the things that I've tried to bring to the table as I make decisions - to trust what I see. In practices with my teams I'm observing not only how they play but the coaches and the student athletes interact and how the students and athlete interact with each other. I'll try to get a sense of how healthy programs are rather than what people just tell me."

Contact David Jesse: 313-222-8851 or djesse@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @reporterdavidj.

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