David Jesse, and Mark Snyder

Detroit Free Press

After 15 months of waiting, the University of Michigan has its next permanent athletic director after Connecticut AD Warde Manuel agreed in principle to accept the job, according to a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly yet.

Contract details are still being finalized, but the two sides have an agreement. He is expected to be introduced later this week.

A message left for Manuel was not immediately returned.

Mark Blaudschun, a former Boston Globe sports writer, first reported the hiring on his website.

U-M spokesman Rick Fitzgerald would neither confirm nor deny the report. "We have no information to share with you about this report," he wrote to the Free Press in an email.

Manuel, a former Michigan football player who served in the U-M athletic department for years as an administrator, will be the 13th athletic director in school history.

“It’s happy and sad for us,” UConn president Susan Herbst told reporters, when she and Manuel left a board of trustees meeting Wednesday. “We’re incredibly proud of him, but he has brought a lot to UConn.”

He brings with him not only an understanding of the university's athletic department, but also a decade of Division I experience as an athletic director -- at Buffalo and, most recently, Connecticut, where he has been since 2012.

Manuel would bring rare experience to U-M AD job

Every U-M athletic director since 1921 has had a previous tie to the university -- whether as a coach, an athlete, a fundraiser or a staffer -- before taking over. Manuel's history is deeper than most. He played football for Bo Schembechler and worked as an assistant and associate athletic director under Tom Goss and Bill Martin. In the athletic department, he oversaw operations and was the liaison for football and men's basketball. He also earned a bachelor's degree, plus a master's in social work and one in business from U-M.

Manuel and football coach Jim Harbaugh were teammates on U-M's 1986 team.

Martin didn’t know anything official about the hiring today, but he was full of praise of Manuel, who was in his department in 2000-05.

“Warde worked for me a long time,” said Martin, who promoted Manuel from assistant to associate AD. “I promoted him, gave him a lot of responsibility. He was an excellent generalist. He had knowledge in everything, from academic support and issues, because of his background in higher ed -- he was pursuing a PhD at the time -- to overseeing sports. Obviously, having grown up in Michigan’s culture and starting as a student-athlete (helped).”

Manuel, 47, returns to take over an athletic department that has much of its foundation in place but is looking for a stable leader.

He will take over from interim athletic director Jim Hackett, who left retirement in late October 2014 step in for Dave Brandon, who resigned under pressure after a number of public controversies. Hackett said last week that he will transition out of his current role when a new AD is named but gladly will remain on board to assist in the transition.

U-M hired a search firm, Turnkey Sports and Entertainment, to help identify and vet candidates during the process. There also was an advisory committee that included U-M president Mark Schlissel, Hackett, softball coach Carol Hutchins, women’s soccer co-captain Corinne Harris, special counsel Liz Barry, faculty athletics representative Anne Curzan, U-M executive vice president and chief financial officer Kevin Hegarty and former U-M football player Stefan Humphries.

“I’m looking for the best person for the job,” Schlissel said in December. “Obviously, having relevant experience is an important predictor of success at any job, but I’m approaching the search with quite an open mind. ... Obviously, experience in organized Division I athletics is also a big component of a person’s potential success. The bottom line is we’re going to hire a spectacular person to lead the program forward, and there are many criteria that we’ll have to apply and balance.”

When asked whether Michigan ties were necessary, he said it could have "advantages."

Manuel's time at U-M allowed him to see both the ups and the downs of the department.

He was an assistant AD when Martin took over in 2000 and watched as the massive department running a consistent deficit became a regular moneymaker. He oversaw football and men's basketball in 1998-2005, when football was uncommonly stable with Lloyd Carr as coach but basketball was the opposite.

There was a chaotic transition from Brian Ellerbe working as an interim basketball coach to getting the full-time job to his firing, followed by Tommy Amaker's hiring. There also was the fallout from the Ed Martin booster scandal.

Bill Martin and Manuel had “a good working relationship,” Martin said today. After they had worked together for a few years, they sat down and had a conversation about Manuel’s future.

“I tried to groom him the best I could to move on and be an AD at another institution, and look where he is today,” Martin said. “I think he’s mellowed, which is good. I’m very proud of Warde and his progress through the athletic world in higher education. It’s a very challenging world.”

They had a conversation in December, when both were in New York for the National Football Foundation Hall of Fame dinner and annual meetings. They walked through New York City.

During his 2005-12 tenure at Buffalo, Manuel inherited a successful basketball coach in Reggie Witherspoon and never had to make a change, despite alternating success and struggles. The program earned three postseason berths. In football, he made his big splash hire, grabbing former Nebraska quarterback Turner Gill as coach. Gill won the Mid-American Conference in his third season, but a 5-7 season followed, and Gill bolted for Kansas.

Manuel made a jump to Connecticut in 2012, and that's where he caught national attention.

Taking over a basketball program that was failing in the Academic Progress Rate -- bad enough that penalties were imposed and the program was banned from the 2013 NCAA tournament as a result -- Manuel was expected to clean up the mess. In his first two years, the APR soared and UConn was back in good graces.

The women's basketball program continued to roll under legendary coach Geno Auriemma, but the men's program had to deal with transition. Jim Calhoun, who had guided UConn to a pair of national titles but was suspended for three games at the start of the 2011-12 season for failure to maintain an atmosphere of NCAA compliance, soon retired.

Manuel immediately had to decide on a successor and chose inexperienced former Connecticut star Kevin Ollie. He led UConn to the national title in just his second year.

In just a few years, Manuel hired football coach Bob Diaco, plus coaches in men's and women's ice hockey, volleyball, women's track and field and softball.

A New Orleans native, Manuel has shown dedication to the academic achievement of athletes, and that might be among the most appealing traits to U-M president Mark Schlissel.

From the start of Schlissel's tenure at Michigan in the fall of 2014, he often has commented about wanting a strong connection between academics and athletics, and Manuel has the reputation to fill that. He also showed an ability to fund-raise, finishing off a new basketball practice facility at UConn in 2014.

For his Connecticut success, he was named one of three Athletic Directors of the Year by Under Armour in 2014-15.

After he graduated from U-M in 1989, Manuel ran Michigan's Wade H. McCree, Jr., Incentive Scholars Program, connecting Detroit Public School students with the state's universities.

Hackett is on a month-to-month agreement that pays him $600,000 per year, though he said he donated half of that to Athletes Connected, a U-M student-athlete mental-health group.

Brandon had a salary approaching $1 million per year when he left U-M.

Manuel’s original contract with UConn, obtained by USA TODAY, was signed in 2012 and scheduled to run through 2017. It was slated to pay him $450,000 per year, with the possibility of a $100,000 bonus each year for meeting “academic and other performance goals.” The contract also called for him to make $300,000 in deferred compensation over the final three years (2014-17), similar to a stay bonus. But because he won't reach March 2017, he will forfeit his accrued total, which is about $183,000.

Manuel also had allowances for housing and a car, and his contract states that he will have to repay $50,000 of the housing allowance to UConn.

According to Manuel's initial contract, there was an option to extend the deal into 2019, but Connecticut spokesman Mike Enright told USA TODAY Sports that it had not been extended. As a result, Manuel does not owe a buyout. Had the extension kicked in, he could have owed at least $900,000.

U-M's Jim Hackett helped at tough time, stays involved