Time right for Diaz’s next step
Hyde: No doubting UM coordinator for following his big dream.
Well, here’s one thing everyone should agree on: Manny Diaz had to take this job.
He had to leave Miami for Temple. He had to go from running one of college football’s best defenses to joining a school that’s suddenly a springboard for head coaches.
Yes, for all the questions this brings Miami, Diaz had to take another step toward chasing the most remarkable of dreams, the kind that draw all of us to sports in the first place and drew Diaz more than most.
“I want to thank everyone for being here,” Diaz said to applause at Temple on Thursday afternoon as the obvious storylines diverged.
The Miami story that played out right then showed coach Mark Richt without the architect of the defense that drove whatever success this team has had the past few years.
The Temple story obviously played out here too. Its past three coaches have gone on to take jobs with major
programs, a line that started with Al Golden coming to Miami.
Finally, there’s Diaz’s story, and it’s a remarkable one. Temple athletic director Patrick Kraft made a point of telling how Diaz’s flight to Philadelphia for the job interview was diverted to Washington. Diaz rented a car, drove the final few hours and made it on time.
“That’s what this job meant to him,” Kraft said.
But this was the easiest leg of a story that started when Diaz was a producer at ESPN on an NFL show. That was Diaz’s career path out of college. He had been the sports editor of the Florida State student newspaper during college.
“I wanted to be you,” he once said to me, meaning being a sports writer. Meaning he, seriously now, could aim higher.
He did too. His nuts-and-bolts football talk on that ESPN show with former NFL players such as Tom Jackson and Sterling Sharpe gave Diaz a coaching itch. That was in 1998.
He asked Florida State defensive coordinator Chuck Amato for a job, any job — for no pay. NCAA rules prevent coaches from working for free, so Diaz took a part-time job in the recruiting office stuffing envelopes and doing bookkeeping. He took another part-time job in a government-data center to earn some money while his wife, Stephanie, worked for a catering company to help make ends meet.
The Diaz family, which then included an infant boy, lived in Burt Reynolds Hall, the athletic dorm. For two years, their nextdoor neighbor was future NFL player Anquan Boldin.
How many of us dream that big? How many have chased our hopes that hard?
After two years at Florida State, Diaz took another unpaid job as a graduate assistant at North Carolina State, where Amato became head coach. Two years after that, Diaz got an actual paying job as linebackers coach.
He was on his way then. When Richt needed a defensive coordinator at Miami, he remembered the hungry dreamer starting at Florida State. That led to three great years of Miami’s defense and led to Thursday’s scene at Temple too.
“We’re about making big plays, about [forcing] turnovers, about leading the nation in sacks,” Diaz told his new school. “You’ve got to make the quarterback uncomfortable. The quarterback’s got to feel the pain.”
“Will you bring the turnover chain with you?” a Philadelphia reporter asked Diaz.
“The turnover chain will always belong to the University of Miami,” Diaz said.
So there’s that, Miami fans. Diaz will coach the Hurricanes’ final game against Wisconsin in the Pinstripe Bowl, but it’s an unsettled time for them. It was a disappointing season. Recruiting closes next week.
Now the leader of the lone beacon of success in the program has left. Much of the defensive talent is departing as well, which is another reason Diaz had to go right now. It would seem his stock will never be higher in the short term.
Yet there shouldn’t be questions from Miami fans to Diaz, just appreciation. He did well here. Now he follows his dream to a different stage.
And what a dream it is.