Stopping Michael Vick was the task.
In an all-ACC contest at the turn of the millennium, Florida State was looking for its second national championship in the Bobby Bowden era. Vick, Frank Beamer and the Virginia Tech Hokies stood in the way.
Vick did his thing — totalling 225 passing yards and nearly 100 on the ground — but defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews’ Seminole defense stepped up when it mattered. They shut out the Hokies in the fourth quarter en route to a 46-29 victory, granting another title to the Hall of Fame head coach.
Working under Andrews as a volunteer in the recruiting office was a young Manny Diaz, who, after graduating from Florida State in 1995, left a job at ESPN and returned to his alma mater to pursue his passion for coaching. He also had experience as sports editor of Florida State’s student newspaper, and although he enjoyed the journalism field, he realized it was not where he wanted to be long-term.
“My wife gets a lot of credit, because she was the one that really encouraged me to make a leap,” Diaz told The Chronicle. “There was no plan. I just knocked on the door at Florida State and said, ‘Hey, I’ll help in any way I can.’ So it was not a good plan.”
Nonetheless, Diaz certainly took advantage of this opportunity, learning from the best in the business while completing fairly mundane tasks. He licked envelopes and mailed VHS tapes like any typical office aide.
“If you do small jobs well, and people see you do a small job well, then they give you some slightly bigger jobs, and you’re in the trust of people and that’s where it all comes from,” Diaz said.
Because the collegiate staffs were so small at the time, Diaz had a first-hand look at what is now one of the most decorated coaches rooms in college football.
“I was one of 15 in the staff room. Bobby Bowden at the end of the table. You’ve got Mickey Andrews and [linebackers coach] Chuck Amato to your right. You have Mark Richt as the offensive coordinator to your left. Holy cow, what a room of people to learn from,” Diaz said at ACC media days.
With ESPN and Bowden’s Florida State as Diaz’s first two employers, the young professional understood valuable lessons about attention to detail and what it takes to be great at the highest level, a key lesson for Diaz when he was “young and very malleable.”
“My first five years out of college, I was basically at the industry standard of two places,” Diaz said. “So it was like a Ph.D. in excellence, really. I didn’t even know how good I had it until I went to other places and saw why people lose.”
At ESPN, Diaz had worked with highlight tapes and film, which proved consequential in the technological revolution taking on the world and college sports. Amato, the linebackers coach at Florida State, was impressed with Diaz’s computer acumen.
“The first time I asked him to break down film, he did a great job,” Amato told the Miami Herald. “I asked him how long it took. He said, ‘Five or six hours.’ I knew then that he was serious. We were switching from films to tapes. I was the only full-time coach who knew how to turn the dadgum computer on, and Manny showed me how to do it.”
In 2000, Amato was hired as N.C. State’s head coach. Diaz earned his first positional leadership role in 2002 as the Wolfpack’s linebackers coach, and that started a rapid rise through the coaching ranks for the talented defensive mind.
‘A pinch me moment’
The Diaz family is no stranger to earning their way to success; their story is nothing short of remarkable.
Diaz’s paternal grandmother, Elisa, immigrated from Cuba while her husband was there as a political prisoner. She came with only a dime in her pocket so she could call her brother in Miami to pick her up. Elisa’s son, Manny Diaz Sr., sat on her lap as they traveled to the U.S.
Manny Diaz Sr. worked in law, representing defendants in high-profile cases. In 2001, he ran successfully for mayor of Miami; in his two terms, he supervised a real-estate boom in the city that received national recognition. U.S. News and World Report honored Diaz Sr. as one of America’s Best Leaders, and he was named Urban Innovator of the Year by the Manhattan Institute.
The junior Diaz learned the value of work ethic from his family, noting that “like many people coming to the country with nothing,” his family’s success “is the American story, the American dream.” He also learned important skills from his dad, finding his passion for what it truly means to be a leader.
“Anytime that you’re a public figure, you’re going to open yourself up to criticism in a way, and you can’t allow that to deviate from what your vision is,” Diaz said. “Ideally, it’s to make something better, whether it’s making the city better or making a program better. So yeah, [he] was certainly a great role model for me.”
Diaz is part of a growing trend of Hispanic coaches in Division I college football. But that representation wasn’t there when Diaz was a child.
“I think it’s just the ever-changing dynamic of America,” Diaz said. “I think it’s going to become more and more common as our country continues to evolve and to grow. That’s a good thing, because ultimately, how good you do a job should be based on how you do a job.”
From a young age, Diaz was enamored by athletics. He grew up in Miami in the 1980s, and he calls it a “football-crazy city,” because the only professional sports team was the NFL’s Miami Dolphins — who went to two Super Bowls that decade.
“My parents joke that I learned how to read by reading the sports pages,” Diaz said. “I also had the wherewithal to understand that after high school [playing] was probably going to stop for me,” Diaz said. “The question for me was always, what’s the next best thing to playing, and that’s really what I’ve been pursuing ever since.”
After working his way up the coaching ranks to become Miami’s defensive coordinator, Diaz was chosen to serve the city in a different capacity than his father. College football fans might remember the “turnover chain,” Diaz’s brainchild to incentivize his defenses to force offensive miscues. But the swag was backed up by results; after leading the elite Hurricane defense to one of the nation’s best from 2016-18, Diaz got a special opportunity.
Just two weeks after Diaz accepted his first head coaching job at Temple in December 2018, Miami head coach Mark Richt abruptly retired, and Diaz was offered Richt’s job. It was a dream situation — in the city where his grandmother found refuge, the city that his dad transformed, the city where he grew up and which fostered his love for sports. Four generations of the Diaz family, from Elisa to Diaz’s sons, attended his inaugural press conference.
“It was a pinch-me moment,” Diaz said. “You don’t really get to control where you work in this profession … the ability to be able to go back home to coach the team that I was a young boy in the stands rooting for was a very unique experience.”
Although Diaz brought Miami back into the AP poll after a couple years outside of it, he was fired after his third season. The Hurricanes entered the 2021 season ranked No. 14 but stumbled to a 2-4 start. Despite an injury to quarterback D’Eriq King, Diaz’s team bounced back from that start to a 7-5 record.
“I thought we were on the way of building a really strong culture,” Diaz said at his Duke introductory press conference. “We had 12 ACC wins the last two years … so we felt like we were on the way, but … you’re in this profession, you understand what it is.”
It was still a learning opportunity for Diaz, who feels more prepared to lead the Blue Devils after his experience with the Hurricanes.
“I’ve joked it’s like parenting … you think you have some sort of idea of what it’s like until you bring your firstborn home. And it’s like, whoa, where’s the instruction manual for them?” Diaz said. “So after your first year as a head coach, I think you get your sea legs underneath you a lot more.”
‘Duke just checked every box’
Diaz didn’t have much time to dwell on that bump in the road, because as the door in his hometown closed, another one quickly opened.
“I think [Penn State head coach] James Franklin called me an hour after getting fired … the body wasn’t cold at the funeral,” Diaz joked at his Duke introductory press conference. “I do believe that God steers us to where we need to be when we need to be there. Some lessons I learned at Penn State made me a better man, made me a better coach for sure.”
How did Diaz handle losing his job at Miami? By leading the second-best defense in the country at Penn State. In 2023, the Nittany Lions led the nation in rushing yards allowed and were third in scoring defense.
Diaz was a finalist for the Broyles Award — given to the nation’s best coordinator — as his name was floated across head coaching searches. However, he turned down multiple offers and waited. Then Duke’s came.
“You recognize you’re probably gonna have one more shot at this,” Diaz said Dec. 9. “So if you’re gonna get another coaching job, you want to make really, really sure … about not just the place you want to be at, but the people who you are aligning yourself with. That’s where I felt like Duke just checked every box.”
“For coaches that have coached at Duke, almost everyone I’ve ever spoken to says it’s their favorite stop anywhere they’ve ever been. Because as a coach … these are the types of kids that you want to coach,” Diaz said at ACC Kickoff.
‘A model of servant leadership’
Diaz’s units are notoriously tough, with stingy defenses that give nightmares to opposing offenses. But there is a holistic aspect to toughness that Diaz prioritizes, a mentality that transcends physicality.
“Everybody thinks about football with physical toughness, and that’s certainly a large part of it, but as important, if not more so, is mental and emotional toughness,” Diaz said. “[I want] a team that never knows it’s beaten and is very resilient, because football is a game of adversity, similar to how life is.”
There’s an element of joy, too, because Diaz wants teams who are “always excited to play,” and “enjoy playing with one another.”
“Our guys work 365 days a year for these 12 occasions. So there’s nothing like seeing them celebrate afterwards,” Diaz said.
The players have been receptive to Diaz from the beginning, even after a tumultuous few weeks in the aftermath of former head coach Mike Elko’s departure. Diaz conducted individual Zoom meetings with players, wanting to maximize his connection with his team as early as possible.
“Some coaches might want to come in and force their agenda without even talking to the players first,” said graduate wide receiver Jordan Moore at ACC Kickoff. “But he was really respectful and really cognizant of our culture and what we think of our program. He was able to implement what he believes and we can fuse it together.”
That humility comes from the Bowden way at Florida State in the 1990s, which has fundamentally shaped the way Diaz views his position.
“Going back to coach Bowden, it’s a model of servant leadership. You are there to serve others, not the other way around,” Diaz said. “People look at leadership positions that everybody’s there to honor your wins and desires, and it’s really the opposite. If you’re doing it the right way, in my mind, you’re there to help everybody else’s dream come true.”
To this day, he remembers the standard set at ESPN and his national championship team with the Seminoles; he still wants to coach a defense “that Mickey Andrews would approve.” That standard reminds him of Duke’s culture and his vision for this football team.
“Anything that has these four letters attached to it should be excellent,” Diaz said. “That’s a standard that is hard to achieve, but it’s a pathway, and once you dedicate yourself to the path, then there's nothing really else that matters."
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Ranjan Jindal is a Trinity junior and sports editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.