Welcome back inside the Ann Arbor Studios of the Big 1050 WTCA online at the big 1050.com.

Sam's extra time with Ward Manual from Friday.

That conversation continues right now.

Sam Webb, Ward Manual right here on the Michigan Insider on the Big 1050 WTK.

You did something I thought was very innovative when it came to your sort of NIL concept, where you brought in like a general manager that was kind of an intermediary between your department and student athletes.

And there has been sort of a quantum leap

in competitiveness in the NIL space

for Michigan when it comes to NIL.

So can you give your assessment of how far things have come and why from an athletic director's perspective?

Yeah, listen, I think we've grown it in a way that we saw the need to grow it, set a solid foundation and a base of expectations and how we're going to manage it.

So we don't have problems where kids are leaving because they're not being given what

they were promised by the champion circle.

That was an emphasis with me from the very start.

And at Michigan, you know, it was hard at the beginning to get people to understand the need to do this.

Why?

Because our culture had not been that way.

Our culture was not one that said, we need to do things under the table to be better.

We always did things.

And that started before Bo, but definitely with Bo, right?

I mean, I couldn't get a sandwich from somebody if it might be illegal, you know.

But I thought we started off with a great foundation, and Tracy Whitehead has come in,

and she has done a phenomenal job as a GM.

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