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Warde Manuel addresses the crowd during a press conference to announce his hiring as the 12th athletic director in University of Michigan history on Jan. 29, 2016.

(Melanie Maxwell | The Ann Arbor News )

ANN ARBOR -- Michigan football's future schedules feature plenty of marquee rivalry games. The matchups will drum up attention and spike TV ratings. They are, in a perfect world, what college football is all about.

This, however, is not a perfect world, and Michigan's future schedules are not perfect.

On Thursday, Michigan and Notre Dame jointly announced the renewal of their rivalry series. Under the agreement, the two will play in South Bend in 2018 and in Ann Arbor in 2019. Coinciding with the move was U-M's decision to tear up a 2018-19 home-and-home contract with Arkansas.

While the new arrangement will match up college football's two winningest programs, its structure has also irked many Michigan followers.

For one, Notre Dame ended the programs' last series -- a decision the Irish made by opting out of a contract dated through 2031 -- by hosting two of the last three games.

Moreover, the new deal also throws Michigan's 2018 and 2019 schedules out of whack. In 2018, the Wolverines will play Notre Dame, Michigan State and Ohio State all on the road. The following year, they'll play each at Michigan Stadium.

The disproportion is abundant.

On a Friday morning radio interview on "The Michigan Insider" on WTKA-AM, Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel discussed the issues with fill-in host Bruce Madej, a former 28-year sports information director at U-M.

According to Manuel, changes to the Wolverines' future schedules could still come.

The first-year AD said he's "hopeful" that the current 2018 and 2019 Big Ten games against Michigan State and Ohio State might be able to be revisited.

"I've had conversations and will continue to have conversations to look at the imbalance of (the schedule), particularly of having Michigan State and Ohio State in the same year," Manuel said.

"It's something that I'd like to work towards to have that balance," he added. "(Michigan State and Ohio State) are our two biggest rivalries on our schedule every year. While you love the fact that you have both at home when you have them, you hate the fact that you have both on the road like this year (2016). It just causes that imbalance for our fans and our team."

The gulf in year-to-year schedules -- that conformity of Michigan State and Ohio State home/away games -- dates back to 2014 when the Wolverines traveled to East Lansing and Columbus. The discrepancy stems from the Big Ten's most recent scheduling shakeups -- adding Rutgers and Maryland, creating East and West Divisions and ultimately moving to a nine-game conference schedule.

With all those issues already at hand, the addition of Notre Dame to Michigan's future schedules only magnifies the problems.

Manuel said the new scheduling imbalance stems from the initiation of the nine-game Big Ten schedule. The arrangement features a five-four split in annual home and away league games with schools playing five conference home games every other year.

For Michigan, the five home games come in even-numbered years.

That means the Wolverines will host four league home games in 2019.

Playing a road non-conference game that year, Manuel said, would leave U-M with just six home dates -- creating one less game for season-ticket holders and leaving a hole in the annual budget.

"In terms of balance and where we need to be, we need to have and want to have seven home games (per year)," Manuel said. "So when we look at that, we were off-centered. If we would have had Arkansas (on the schedule), we would have had potentially eight home games in 2018 and only had six home games in 2019.

"So we were trying to look strategically for our team and our fans and our budget to balance where we are in terms of number of home contests."

All that said, Manuel didn't ignore the elephant in the room.

"Now, this is not the perfect setup, obviously," he said. "That's on my mind."

According to Manuel, the discussions and negotiations between Michigan and Notre Dame started before his tenure as AD began. At the root of the renewal were early conversations between Jim Harbaugh and Brian Kelly.

Left on the curbside, meanwhile, is Arkansas. Under the original agreement, the Razorbacks were scheduled to visit Ann Arbor on Sept. 1, 2018, with U-M making the trip to Fayetteville on Aug. 31, 2019.

Now Michigan will play in South Bend on Sept. 1, 2018 and host Notre Dame on Oct. 26, 2019. The Wolverines will pay a reported buyout of $2 million to sever the deal.

On Thursday, Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long voiced his displeasure, saying he's "disappointed" in Michigan's move to pull out of a series that's been scheduled for four years.

"The late notice of Michigan's cancellation makes (future scheduling) substantially more difficult," Long told HawgSports.com.

Long and Manuel previously worked side-by-side at Michigan early in their respective administrative careers. Long was hired by U-M athletic director Bo Schembechler in the mid-'80s and spent 11 years at the school.

"I know as an AD that when you get those calls about people wanting to move games on your schedule or cancel series, it can make it very difficult," Manuel said on Friday. "Jeff has been a longtime friend and is a former colleague (at Michigan), so that was not an easy conversation. But we got through it, we figured it out and we're going to live up to the contract terms. So it all worked out."

Manuel noted that, like Michigan, Notre Dame also needed to move "several games" to accommodate the ACC and other opponents.

"It's a lot of work that goes into (changing the schedule), particularly when you're this close," Manuel said. "For us, two years out is close. We're working into the mid-2020s in scheduling, so two years out is really close."

In the end, a deal was struck because, regardless of scheduling semantics, both parties wanted to see the Wolverines and Fighting Irish return to the field.

"In this particular case, it was really a combination of what (Michigan) needed, what Notre Dame needed, and then you work through it to see if you can balance the schedule," Manuel said. "It would have been perfect for example, if we could have started the series in a later year or reversed it, but it just couldn't happen. I mean, we looked at all those scenarios to try and make it happen and we couldn't."



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