South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
Diaz makes his 1st strong decision
Temple’s Feeley named strength, conditioning coach
As he outlined his priorities and vision for the Hurricanes this past week, new Miami coach Manny Diaz made it clear hiring the right strength and conditioning coach for his program would be key.
He has settled on his choice — Temple’s Dave Feeley.
“David is an outstanding coach who has a strong track record of motivating players to help them reach their full potential,” Diaz said in a statement announcing the hire. “The culture we’re putting into place and the tone we set for the upcoming season starts in the weight room when our players return to campus. That’s why this hire was so critical and I’m thrilled to welcome David to the Miami program.”
The announcement of Feeley’s hire is the first new addition to Diaz’s staff Miami has confirmed since the coach took over last Sunday.
The school has not made any official announcement on any other potential new hires, including an offensive or defensive coordinator, though it is expected Louisiana Tech’s Blake Baker will lead Miami’s defense.
Diaz said this week UM’s entire defensive staff — including Ephraim Banda, Jonathan Patke, Jess Simpson and Mike Rumph — would be retained moving forward, even as the Hurricanes’ offensive staff was dismissed.
Last month shortly after briefly taking over as Temple’s coach, Diaz made keeping Feeley on the Owls’ staff one of his top priorities.
He named Feeley — who had been at Temple since 2017 — the program’s assistant athletic director in charge of football sports performance.
Feeley, who worked for previous Temple coach Geoff Collins, has 14 years experience in college football and has worked at FIU, South Carolina, Ball State, Rutgers and South Florida.
Feeley served as the assistant strength and conditioning coach at FIU from 2008-2010 and while there, Feeley assisted with women’s tennis, softball and baseball. He served as the assistant strength and conditioning coach at South Carolina in 2016, helping the Gamecocks achieve a 6-6 record and reach the Birmingham Bowl.
At Ball State, where he was the director of football strength and conditioning from 2011-2015, the Cardinals made two bowl appearances and the women’s basketball team with which he assisted made three consecutive appearances in the NIT.
At Miami, he’ll replace Gus Felder, whom Diaz dis- missed this past week.
“The old strength staff they did an outstanding job and they improved us in the three years they were here. But that coach in that room is your program,” Diaz said Wednesday when discussing his views for Miami’s strength staff. “There’s some places where there’s a football program and then there’s a strength program. And they’re sort of these two things that occur at the same time. The way I want to run this program is there is just a program. And, because very honestly, the kids lift weight[s] and workout with the strength coach a lot more than they practice … that person is vital. The feeling and the vibe the players get when they’re in there is vital.
“In creating the atmosphere where they want to go to work and they need to be pushed, it needs to be really, really hard. And there was sort of the notion that maybe we didn’t really work quite the way we needed to work this past year. That was expressed to me and that’s why I say everything matters. There’s never one smoking gun, but there was some things that if the players sense it, then it’s an issue.”