Doubts? Fears? Gone as Hurricane Manny keeps bringing change

CORAL GABLES —No one knows for certain how all these new players will fit or if the new staff will work or whether Manny Diaz can even manage the nuts and bolts of all this change in a big-time football program.

Maybe he’s just bringing some double-espresso energy to a program desperate for that. But this much is clear: This is how you change the contaminated and swirling narrative surrounding Miami Hurricanes football.

The doubts? The fears? All the poison everyone felt when Miami left the Pinstripe Bowl “limping into the offseason,” as Diaz said Wednesday on National Signing Day?

All gone.

In its place was Diaz entering a football meeting room to announce 22 recruits to the media but starting everyone off with yet another surprise.

“Breaking news,” he said. There was a 23rd recruit. Former Virginia Tech defensive end Trevon Hill was in. He’s the latest to arrive through the mystical transfer portal and fortify a roster that, let’s face it, needed some fortifying.

In four short weeks Diaz has changed everything — or maybe it just feels that way: the roster, the staff, the local narrative, the coming season in some form, though let’s not get too far ahead of this honeymoon thing.

Change? One minute Miami looked in a tailspin with the suddenly sagging Mark Richt program; the next minute Diaz was in charge and announcing that safety Bubba Bolden was transferring from Southern California.

That was the first step, everyone says. Tight end Brevin Jordan, who attended high school with Bolden in Las Vegas, told Diaz that Bolden would be open to coming if Miami wanted him.

“This is what we needed to flip the momentum,” newly promoted defensive coordinator Ephraim Banda said. “I thought it was like the blitz package Manny put in before the Florida State game that kept getting to [quarterback Deondre Francois].

“We needed something to change the game. That showed everyone something was going on here.”

Diaz quickly became the wizard of the transfer portal. He needed it too considering this senior class that fell between Al Golden’s firing and

Richt’s hiring consisted of just seven players.

“We needed help,” Diaz said.

Then a third party got Diaz and Alabama quarterbacks coach Dan Enos together. They talked philosophy and principles, strategies and the road to success.

“Everything came up A-plus when I asked people about [Diaz], and our conversations showed we had the same ideas,” Enos said on taking the offensive coordinator job.

Change? One minute the Hurricanes weren’t sure of a quarterback; the next minute the position was packed with possibility with the addition of Ohio State transfer Tate Martell. One day their defensive line was thin; now they have Hill and UCLA transfer Chigozie Nnoruka.

The biggest change, though, is the man at the front of the room. Diaz took over with an adrenaline rush, his words coming so fast he could use subtitles, his thoughts so transformative he wanted players to feel as if they were in a new program.

“We want to create a culture where guys want to be in this building,” Diaz said.

So he hit Twitter with a hash-tag movement of “The New Miami” and welcomed players back with a pro-wrestling flair. But he’s also smart enough to know the meeting after that wrestling festival where he laid out his new program was crucial.

“Guys were on the edge of their seats, focused, for an hour and 20 minutes,” he said.

The idea was clear. “I know perception matters from outside in, but the most important thing was to rebrand it on the inside for the 100-something odd men that sat in here that first meeting,” Diaz said. “If you’re going to say something like, ‘The New Miami,’ well, obviously everyone knows it’s the honeymoon period, right? How to define it? What does it mean?

“Ultimately, if it means the right thing to them, it will look like the right thing in the fall. That’s what really matters, right? It’s not really what we say we’re going to do in the spring time or winter. It’s what we do when we go out there and play in the fall.”

Diaz’s first 30 days could be a “30 for 30” documentary on how to rejuvenate a floundering program: new players, new staff, a whole new feel to what’s going on in Coral Gables.

Sure, no one knows how this will translate Aug. 31 against Florida. But Diaz has cleared the air of poison. That’s a start.

CHARLES TRAINOR JR./MIAMI HERALD University of Miami coach Manny Diaz has changed the full narrative around the Hurricanes, as his first recruiting class showed.

Dave Hyde