UM spent $12M investigating athletic department. No report was produced

A $12 million investigation into the University of Michigan’s athletic department produced no actual report amid findings that revealed the institution failed to be transparent and accountable.

Michigan did not release any comprehensive investigative report because it said none was conducted or written. Instead, the university summarized the findings and recommendations compiled by Jenner & Block, the Chicago-based law firm that conducted the athletic department’s “culture review,” in a question-and-answer format that was posted to the university’s website, along with a video statement from President Domenico Grasso. The regents were only verbally briefed on the firm’s findings and the investigation’s specifics, the university said.

The university said the related investigation found misconduct was not “widespread” throughout the Athletic Department, but it wasn’t always addressed “consistently, promptly, or in accordance with University expectations.”

For $12 million, the university should have made a comprehensive report — whether it was given to the Board of Regents or not, said Aaron Hernandez, director of the National Sports Law Institute and an associate professor at Marquette University Law School. The university’s board or general counsel clearly asked for the information to be given through verbal briefings to protect the university from legal liability and make it impossible to be obtained through a public records request, he said.

“The report would expose weak points,” Hernandez said. “For strategic, legal or institutional reputation reasons, they wouldn’t want that out there. … But I would doubt that some sort of report doesn’t exist.”

The university summary talked in general terms about the weaknesses and issues it found in the Athletic Department’s oversight and didn’t cite any details touching particular scandals — such as football coach Sherrone Moore’s firing and inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. The university declined to answer further questions about the findings or how they were released.

The recommendations were released alongside the announcement that Athletic Director Warde Manuel is stepping down at year’s end. While none of Michigan’s eight regents released any public statement about the findings and Manuel’s departure, one regent indicated that he is satisfied with how Grasso’s administration handled the matter.

Regent Paul Brown, a Democrat and managing partner of a venture capital firm who’s running for a second term on the board, said he would like to see the institution be as transparent as possible given the legal restrictions and that he was happy with what was posted online and that it fit with what he’d seen.

“The real work product was the findings and recommendations that were written,” Brown said. “That included information about what was said to come to those conclusions.”

The job of the board is to protect the institution from reputational, institutional or legal harm, said Armand Alacbay, the senior vice president of strategy for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which advocates for academic excellence, academic freedom and accountability at colleges and universities.

However, the board also has a duty to the public — particularly the taxpayers who are funding the university through state and federal taxes, said Alacbay, who also sits on the George Mason University board. This balancing act is difficult but is the core responsibility of what a board member overseeing a civic institution like a university needs to do, he said.

“If you disclose things, that might damage your reputation, but not disclosing things might as well,” Alacbay said. “If I was on the board, I’m of the mind of erring on the side of more transparency.”

The university explained on its website why it wasn’t releasing a report to the public.

“Maintaining the confidentiality of the investigation protects the privacy of the members of our community who participated, promotes the willingness of witnesses to participate in any future investigations by allaying concerns relating to privacy or risk of retaliation, preserves investigative integrity, and protects the attorney-client privilege that covers the investigation,” university officials said.

The Detroit News filed an open-records request with the university for a copy of the supportive details and findings and related written communications, which Michigan denied, citing attorney-client privilege. The News is appealing the university’s denial.

Sports law expert hits Michigan for ‘failure of transparency’

The findings and recommendations of Jenner & Block attorneys were presented to the board, multiple regents confirmed, and Board Chair Michael Behm said the board intended to make those public in some form.

But the fact that no report was requested or written is a “failure of transparency,” said Jodi Balsam, a professor of clinical law and director of the Sports Law Clinic at Brooklyn Law School.

“The most constructive step the university could have taken is to release a full report,” Balsam said. “You cannot say there are issues with transparency and accountability and then not act with transparency and accountability.”

If the university was trying to appear as though it was holding itself accountable, it didn’t make sense for Michigan officials to write their own summary of the investigation’s findings, the Brooklyn Law Clinic expert said.

“Without more sunlight, the questions about the university’s relationship to the athletics department, longstanding governance questions and whether malfeasants are actually facing consequences go unanswered,” Balsam said.

No public personnel actions were announced as a result of the report. Grasso, who has been Michigan president since May 2025 after Santa Ono’s departure, said in December that the university would “take whatever steps are necessary to ensure conduct like this does not happen again” when he authorized the expanded investigation in December.

Balsam added there’s an inherent contradiction in having a university finance an outside, independent investigation of its own operations.

“Outside investigators promise independence but are funded by the institution they’re looking into,” she said. “It’s not about whether they uncover facts, but if they challenge the institution’s incentives. UM’s incentive is to keep winning, keep their competitive and commercial success. If those are your incentives, you add another layer of bureaucracy, more formal discipline procedures. … What did they learn? What are they reluctant to reveal?”

The university defended its decision against releasing more investigation details to protect the privacy of participants, shield them from retaliation, preserve the integrity of the probe as well as protect attorney-client privilege.

While these are legitimate reasons, other institutions have released reports that were substantial enough to answer questions and provide accountability while still protecting those involved, said Hernandez, who has conducted National Collegiate Athletic Association investigations into institutions with a focus on Division I football.

He pointed specifically to the outside investigation into Baylor University’s Title IX failures. The 13-page report provided specific examples of these failures and was released publicly.

The report revealed numerous Title IX and reporting failures within the university, particularly in the football program. They included a failure to respond to reports of sexual violence by a football player, administrators discouraging victims from reporting incidents, and coaches handling reports of violence or discrimination internally, rather than passing them on to Baylor’s Title IX office.

Protecting the brand or holding people accountable?

While the university’s summary said there was no “widespread” misconduct within the athletic department, Balsam said Jenner & Block’s findings that the athletic department needed to improve its leadership accountability, address organizational and structural flaws, and confront a culture of not reporting issues were concerning by themselves.

“The very fact that personnel did not feel comfortable reporting problems, that warning signs were ignored, employees are willing to stretch rules and rationalize questionable conduct, in the name of winning … that’s its own form of misconduct,” she said.

Athletic departments have increasingly operated as separate entities from the university and the president and board who ultimately provide oversight, Balsam said. The rise of the “commercialization” of athletic departments has heightened this drift, but the refusal of boards to act on it is a problem, she said.

“University oversight has weakened,” she said. “Boards must make a decision that they will either police athletic departments like any athletic department under their oversight or concede that they’re separate commercial enterprises that need the same guardrails as others.”

But in departments where winning is crucial to the university’s identity, like Michigan’s, issues go unreported, overlooked or uninvestigated, said Matt Huml, an associate professor at the University of Cincinnati who studies athletic department management. The university’s own summary alluded to this when it mentioned the challenges that came with overseeing a program as prominent as Michigan’s football program, he said.

The university’s summary said the football program, now under Coach Kyle Whittingham, had “unique oversight challenges.”

“As the Department’s most visible program with the largest roster, coaching staff, and support organization, football requires particularly strong oversight and accountability,” the summary said. “The culture review concluded that existing oversight mechanisms were not sufficiently effective and recommended strengthening leadership oversight, clarifying responsibilities, enhancing reporting relationships and improving compliance processes.”

The findings raise their own questions about how university officials would respond if Michigan went on a losing streak, the University of Cincinnati expert said.

“Just because your program is successful doesn’t mean it can avoid oversight. Does this mean if they started doing bad, the hammer would come down?” Huml said. “Why mention the football’s prominence without offering a specific solution?”

Regent Brown said it was pretty clear early on what did and didn’t occur within the athletic department. He said he had some frustration about how much money was spent to come to what he believed were pretty clear conclusions.

“I think we’ve held people accountable,” Brown said.

What the board’s responsibility is

Hernandez and Balsam agreed Michigan’s summary of findings did not question the top leadership and instead focused the blame and need for improvement squarely on specific departments, such as compliance, and one current employee, Manuel.

These “blanket statements” and “cheap shots,” as Hernandez put it, were “weak moves” to place blame on others for “actions that their board should take responsibility for.”

“Why are the same questions not being asked of the president or the board?” Hernandez said about Grasso and the regents.

University coaches, specifically in football and basketball, wield considerable power because their programs generate significant revenue for the institutions, Huml said. Often, donors are attached to a specific coach or program, and any moves that jeopardize those programs, such as removing a coach or authorizing an investigation, could hurt the flow of donor dollars, he said.

“There’s innate relationships that coaches make with local communities, donors, business people and political leaders,” Huml said. “They’re going to have advocates who support the university, whether that be financially or otherwise, and there’s a power play in how that works.”

Regarding the governance of an institution like Michigan, American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s Alacbay said the university board needed to be more active in addressing the root problems at an institution that allows problems to repeatedly arise.

“It’s easy to get caught up in legal niceties, but what’s the right thing to do?” Alacbay said. “These are not easy business decisions; they’re moral ones, they’re philosophical ones. Board members have to bring the whole of their humanity into it.

“Part of what trustees forget is that universities are special civic institutions that are charged with teaching and also demonstrating good moral fiber. That’s what’s hard about these positions. You can’t just defer to the general counsel, the marketing team or even the president.”

This piece was originally published by the Detroit News on July 22, 2026.