The Washington Monthly has a piece up profiling Ave Maria and its law school's travails. Here's a taste:

From the beginning, Monaghan insisted he wouldnt meddle in the law schools daily operations. As he put it in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, When I owned the Detroit Tigers, I didnt climb into the dugout and tell Sparky how to set his lineup. But behind the scenes, he was quietly amassing control. Monaghan appointed himself chairman of the board. According to deposition testimony that Monaghan and his deputies later gave, Dean Dobranski was also given an employment contract with Monaghans private foundation rather than with Ave Maria law school. This meant the dean answered directly to Monaghan and not the board of governors, which was supposed to be in charge. Dobranski was also obligated to send the former pizza mogul daily writeups of his activities, to which Monaghan would reply with detailed instructions. Whats more, money for both the law school and the colleges was doled out in dribs and drabs, which allowed Monaghan to keep a tight rein on their operations. (St. Marys administrators, for instance, recall pleading with Monaghans foundation for $75 to pay the referees at a baseball game.) None of this really mattered as long as he and the faculty were driving toward the same vision. It was only when Monaghan hit on his next grand scheme that things began to unravel.