Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
What is quarantine for Canes?
It’s a whole bunch of video meetings and lifting objects
What is a college football coach to do with more than 100 players to look out for during coronavirus quarantine at a time when his team would normally be participating in spring practices?
Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz has tried to create some sense of normalcy — while his players, coaches and staff remain hunkered down at home — through Zoom video conferences for meetings, dissemination of recommended player workouts, recruiting analysis and more.
“To have this sort of formless Groundhog Day that we wake up in every day, we’re trying to build a little structure that at least every day can have a little rhythm to it,” Diaz said on 560-AM on Monday morning. “What we’ve tried to do as much as possible is we have tried to create a structure for our football team, for our football program. We have tried to create a structure for our staff and get some sort of routine to the day.
“We will do meetings. The first thing that our players will do every day is they’ll have a video conferencing meeting with us — either as a whole team meeting or with their position group. If nothing else, make sure everybody’s awake, make sure everybody understands their academic responsibilities of that day with, obviously, all classes being online right now. It’s important that our guys still do all the work and do everything right they need to do academically. There is still a semester going on. We can do some football instruction at that time, so we do that, whether as a group or individual units.
“Then, in the afternoon our guys go to class virtually, and then we meet as a staff. We can either be evaluating recruiting film. We’re already on our prep for opponent scouting for the fall, which [are] things that you wouldn’t normally be doing in April — you have spring ball. It’s been a good little shot in the arm to us. We’ve actually started
presenting some scouting reports to our players, and it does let us know that football is around the corner and we’ll get these games and we’ll all be excited to see the Canes play again.”
Diaz said the Hurricanes have been following NCAA guidelines on how much time can be spent with student-athletes on football and how workouts cannot be supervised during this time. He has strength and conditioning coach David Feeley sending out videos on workouts players can do from home.
“We have guys lifting duffel bags filled with water bottles,” Diaz said. “It’s hard to find a weight right now to lift. It’s kind of crazy, but you imagine most of the country is in the same boat.”
On recruiting, Diaz said: “It’s been fantastic. I think it’s actually given our coaches a great way to really make some great connections. We’ve all, a little bit, had our identity taken away from us, right? … They call me ‘football coach’ — well, I don’t get to coach a lot of football [right now]. The kids that they call football players, they’re not playing a lot of football right now. We’re always trying to make that person-to-person connection, and our recruiting staff is doing a great job.”
Diaz shared his thoughts on the possibility of the college football season getting pushed back.
“It is so far off. Today is April 6. We play on Sept. 5,” Diaz said. “That’s in five months, right? Just think about this: one month ago was March 6. That was our last spring practice. How has your world changed since March 6? So, trying to figure out what’s going to happen on May 6, let alone Sept. 6. I know all kinds of people have tried to weigh in on what the world’s going to look like in September. We don’t have any idea what the world’s going to look like in May.
“Here’s the thing: We do know, to some point, we can control it. What I mean by control it, what we do today will have a lot to say with what May 6 looks like. What we do today has a lot to do with what we did, all of us as a society, two weeks ago. That’s kind of the trick of all this. We kind of, as a team, have the ability by what we’re doing right now to affect what we encounter two weeks from now.”