JH: "There’s no Lombardi Trophy in college football"

Better start your own blog.

Same. Maybe in that division but otherwise no. 

He's loose and happy. 

Amen brother.

Why do we have to keep Warde tho?

My issue is we’ll never know now whether things could have continued another year or two. Most of us knew this was likely inevitable at some point. What makes it harder to swallow is hearing that perhaps not everything was done to retain him. 

I'd go so far as to say if Harbaugh wanted to stay and wanted Warde out, Warde would've been out. 

I don't think he forced him.

However, if I don't like my boss, I'm much more likely to look for a different job.

Uh, I didn’t say any of that.  I said he couldn’t stand on stage and say he hated the AD.  I stand by that.

People (on both sides of this) are reducing this to simplistic logic: either he wanted to be at Michigan, or he wanted to be in pros.

I think his actions over the past three years suggest on the contrary that he was torn, between on one hand wanting to keep working at his alma mater and giving his children the same childhood experience he got to have, and on the other hand, wanting another shot at the Lombardi trophy, which he lost by the slimmest of margins in 2012.  

His close friend Todd Anson has tweeted that in his opinion, Harbaugh would still be here if Michigan had handled things differently.  We have no particular reason to doubt him on this, given that he personally knows the man.

Not all of this is necessarily on Manuel himself.  The University's legal counsel may have made some of the key calls, like deciding to suspend Harbaugh in September, dropping its objection to the Big Ten-imposed suspension, and then stalling on giving him protection from a firing over these investigations.  But either way, Michigan made the decision not to fully support Harbaugh when he 1) wanted to fight the NCAA over Burgergate; 2) wanted to fight the Petitti suspension and 3) wanted to make sure these two things wouldn't cost him his job.

Should he have stayed, Harbaugh potentially faced the risk of further suspension and his employer wouldn't guarantee that he'd still have his job.

...and that probably made his decision for him.  Yes, at that point, given all the above, he probably didn't want to be here anymore.  I think a lot of coaches would probably want to leave under those circumstances.

But to say that Michigan never had a chance to keep him around, I don't think that's clear.

Haven't seen 1 person say Warde has the power to force Harbaugh's hand. Of coure JH was going to take the high road as always. He may not have been forced out but what message does it send when your boss lowered your salary, then in the midst of the best 3 year run in modern MI football history  is no where to be found. Was not even involved in contract discussions. Had more face to face meetings with Jim Stapleton than Jim Harbaugh. JH comments about wanting the bear hug are pretty obvious. With a more supportive AD I would bet we get one final 5yr contract for JH. Happy for Jim, excited for the future with Sherrone but it is forever fuck warde manuel.

You have missed the main point.  Manuel's error was cutting JH's pay back in 2020.  Another error was not fully having his back with Petitti and hamburger gate.  But the big errors was cutting his pay. JH never had flirted with the NFL before that.  And he did so three times after that.   

JH himself said that is was a difficult decision and that he was torn.  This is not so black and white as "Harbaugh just wanted to go back to the NFL."  It was a hard decision with lots of grey areas.  But, by cutting his pay back in 2020 Manuel , sowed resentment and made it more likely that JH would leave for the NFL.  

Back in 2020 Manuel had two valid options.  Either fire JH, or keep him but with 100% full support.  Manuel chose the only irrational option--keep him but do so in a way that sowed resentment by publicly and drastically cutting his pay.  JH won big thereafter, and that resentment made it more likely that he would return to the NFL.  Manuel played his hand in the only bad way possible back in 2020.  Three options.  He chose the only totally irrational one.   

He faces a similar choice with Juwan Howard.  He can fire him.  Or he can keep him with full support.  The only irrational choice would be to keep him but with an embarrassing pay cut.  If he does that, and Howard turns it around, he will have sowed resentment and will make it more likely that Howard will jump to the NBA if he starts to win at Michigan.  

Until those bizarre comments came out yesterday, about how he didn't even negotiate directly with him. 

Even after 2021, he didn't return Harbaugh to his pre-cut salary.  Warde completely bungled that, and we would have lost him to Minnesota, but we got lucky.

Offering a deal on Burgergate when Harbaugh was already in Los Angeles about to sign wasn't "in time."  Again, Warde fails on Negotiation 101 repeatedly.  (Notice how the DC we are apparently looking at now had a two year show cause and was the actual bagman for Miami?)

So, why did Warde not do anything about the Pearson report for months?  Why couldn't he bothered to even try to retain Bakich?  Maybe, instead of this Panglossian nonsense, Warde really doesn't do enough to retain great coaches, to get ahead of issues like NIL, etc.  Of course, we are going to get long, condescending proclamations on this subject from his apologists, so I do not know why I bother reading, but like all Michigan fans, I must enjoy misery.   

Let's allow for some nuance. I can understand that Coach Harbaugh wanted to chase a Super Bowl and simultaneously believe/observe that how Warde and the Regents handled his tenure here was lacking in many areas, not the least of which was recognizing what they had and doing everything within their control to make this a job one that would be agonizingly difficult to walk away from. 

To address your points:

1. When? Pretty clearly at the absolute last second, the answer should've been in 2021. NOT simply for $$$ but for what that meant in terms of support, etc. We allowed James Franklin and Ryan Day to have better deals than Jim Harbaugh... patently ridiculous. 

2. The fact that there was negotiation in any way about this was idiotic from a Warde/M perspective. Response should've been "absolutely", but then again these are the same folks that backed out of the TRO at the 11th hour as well.

3. People believe Warde didn't do enough because there is an entire career's worth of evidence, both anecdotal and objective, that demonstrates he didn't / hasn't / won't. I want an AD in place who is going to give Coach Moore all of the support they possibly can as we transition into a new era of college football, I have absolutely no confidence in Warde Manuel to provide that leadership and vision.
 

I expect Warde to get those guarantees sooner. If the reports were true, and he did end up offering immunity, then I have to ask/wonder: why not sooner?

Exactly. He gave us 9 years, 3 conference titles, and a natty. This wild gnashing of teeth seems insane to me. He did want he wanted to do. 21/22/23 were all dalinaces with the NFL. He had nothing left to prove in Ann Arbor. Let the guy ride off in the sunset and support Sherrone moving forward. Go Blue!