Diaz pushes back vs. criticism of program

Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz heard ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit’s criticism of UM’s football program from Saturday, with Herbstreit offering his opinion why the Hurricanes are no longer a national powerhouse.

And without being prompted on Monday, Diaz defended Miami’s administration while responding to Herbstreit’s comments that there isn’t enough support for the football program from the university.

During ESPN’s College Gameday broadcast, Herbstreit cited issues in the athletic department as reasons why the Hurricanes haven’t been relevant in more than a decade.

“You have an athletic department that clearly is not really showing that this is something they are willing to try and make changes,” Herbstreit said. “There was an article this week from [Miami Herald reporter] Barry

Jackson that came out and said that the president basically told Blake James, the AD, ‘Hey, sports, you’re on your own. That’s your thing.’ I don’t know if that’s true, it was in an article.

“To me, college football, you look at the powerhouse programs, they’re aligned in their vision for what needs to happen. Recruiting, budget, staff. Whatever it needs, that’s what it takes. Miami doesn’t have that.

“So I don’t think it matters who the head coach is. Until you get a president and an AD and a coach together on the same page, I guess football doesn’t matter. It matters to the alums and the brotherhood — The U — but I don’t know if it matters to the people making decisions at Miami. If they don’t change that, it doesn’t matter who the head coach is.”

In a five-and-a-half minute comment to open his weekly press conference Monday, Diaz pushed back on Herbstreit’s comments,

saying that University of Miami president Julio Frenk was instrumental in ensuring the 2020 college football was played amidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

“I want to remind everybody it’s not 14 months ago when we were in the grips of the coronavirus pandemic and the narrative was that there’s no way college football should go on in the middle of the pandemic,” Diaz said. “In my eyes, only through the leadership of our president going on record as an expert in infectious diseases and saying ‘not only can we have school on campus, which was not a widely held belief at that time, but we can play a college football season.’

“That would be a strong take for someone who didn’t really seem that interested in athletics. If not for his leadership, I’m not sure the ACC would’ve agreed to play [the 2020 season] and without the ACC, the Big 12 would’ve for sure dropped out. All the memories, record and performances from a year ago have a lot to do with how much Dr. Frenk feels about college athletics and the athletics at University at Miami.”

Diaz also mentioned the improvements Miami’s made to its facilities in recent years — from new dorms to the $40-million Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility that opened in 2018 — as evidence of the administration’s commitment to athletics, while acknowledging the disparity in resources and revenues for athletic departments around the country.

“There will always be somebody with more resources,” Diaz said. “That’s not a Miami problem, that’s a college football problem with a capital P that nobody really wants to talk about. But our best resource at the University of Miami has always been our people. That’s always what we’ve won with.”

Diaz added: “There’s so many things that when coach [Mark] Richt got here that were easy shots to take at Miami and recruiting. Slowly through Mark’s leadership, through [athletic director] Blake James’ leadership and through the university administration, we sort of attacked all those one by one. There’s still a couple we have to get after, but it’s better and the recruiting follows.

“The last two recruiting classes we signed are really the first two classes that have been around when all of this stuff existed. It wasn’t hopes, dreams or promises of ‘when you come, we’ll get these things.’ [The 2020 recruiting class] are the guys who committed to Miami on the backs of a 6-7 [2019] season. Then you saw the ’21 class — Saturday’s game was a commercial for the last two recruiting classes. Those classes don’t happen without us increasing the resources with the support from our administration for what it takes to win here.”

Herbstreit also mentioned Miami playing its home games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens — a 45-minute drive from the Hurricanes’ campus in Coral Gables — as an issue for the program after UM played at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana, a 25-minute drive from campus, until 2007. The Orange Bowl was demolished in 2008 and is now the site of the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park.

“In my mind we’ve got as nice of a stadium as anybody in college football,” Diaz said. “It’s a big-time atmosphere, it’s a big-time place. It’s a great place to host recruits. The indoor facility, phenomenal. We’re attacking the locker room next. There’s a lot of things changing on the positive here.”

Criticisms toward Diaz and the Hurricanes picked up after UM’s 38-17 home loss to Michigan State on Sept 18. Miami beat Central Connecticut State, an FCS program, 69-0 last Saturday to be 2-2 heading into ACC play, which starts versus Virginia on Thursday.

Diaz, who’s 16-12 as the Hurricanes coach, repeatedly mentioned that Miami needs to stack high-level recruiting classes together to get the program where he thinks it can be, saying that Clemson, a fellow ACC team, is a model of how to create a program that competes for championships every year.

“You can compete for the ACC, which is our standard, and have a long-term vision of what it takes to build a roster to get it where you want it to go,” Diaz said. “[Clemson] went recruiting, finally got a transformative quarterback and then another and then another and that’s how they got to be where they are.

“There’s a pattern of how these things occur and how you build a program. But I don’t think [Clemson was] sitting there saying, ‘we’ll be fine when Trevor Lawrence gets here.’ They were still taking all the steps and still trying to compete at that moment. On evidence of what we’ve seen from the ’20 in the ’21 class, if we stack two more classes like that, we’re gonna be really excited about what our locker room looks like.

Diaz took responsibility for the team’s slow start, acknowledging the Hurricanes need to be better as they turn their attention to the eight-game ACC slate ahead of them.

“Our expectation is to go perform,” Diaz said. “We know what’s at stake over these next eight weeks and we think we got as good a shot as anybody. But we’re in a league where you can win them all and you can lose. We got to control our performance to make sure that we play our best starting this Thursday night.”