DURHAM — Manny Diaz didn’t just win the press conference at Duke, he took a victory lap around campus.
Shortly after being introduced as the new head football coach of the Blue Devils, Diaz walked out to center court at Cameron Indoor Stadium during a timeout of the Duke basketball game. He posed for photos with the athletic director who hired him, Nina King. Then, as he was being led back to his seat, Diaz turned to the Cameron Crazies student section and pumped his fist. When they responded enthusiastically, he broke away from his escorts and ran in front of the students, slapping fives. When he found a break in the mass of humanity, he jumped into the crowd with them for a few seconds.
“The press conference wasn’t bad, right?” he had asked rhetorically a couple of hours earlier. “1-0. There’s (Penn State head coach) James Franklin. All you can do is go one and zero today.”
Diaz later decided to run up the score.
After his brief meeting with the Crazies, the video board showed Diaz sitting in his courtside seat with his family. As they do with visiting recruits and returning alumni players, the fans invited Diaz to come visit.
“Manny Diaz, sit with us,” they chanted. Diaz quickly complied, walking down the court, accompanied by his young son, also named Manny.
The crowd parted to allow them to step up onto the bleachers. Diaz, a skilled recruiter, took no time connecting with the undergraduates. He turned to a student clad, for some reason, in an apron and dark blue chef’s hat and asked if he could wear the hat. Another nearby female student brings a blue-painted baby doll in a BabyBjorn carrier to every game, tossing it into the air as the Crazies chant, “Oh, baby!” He quickly learned the craft of a successful “Oh, baby!” toss.
Diaz, whose father was mayor of Miami from 2001 to 2009, was busy winning hearts and minds on his first day on the job. He promised that his energy will remain at Cameron Crazy levels of high while with the Blue Devils.
“You want to see the passion that we play with,” he said. “We should look like we’re the most excited team to play. And part of that is how we practice out there. We’ve got to practice with passion. We’ve got to have fun playing football. There’s a lot of stuff in college football that is not always fun, but Saturdays, that’s special. And when people come to watch us play, we for sure have to look like we’re the ones having more fun than anybody else to the point where they almost think we’re a little deranged because, you know, we probably are a little deranged.”
Diaz was one of the top defensive coordinators in the country, spending nearly a decade running units at Mississippi State, Texas, Penn State and Miami. He is taking his second swing at the head coaching role, both in the ACC. The Hurricanes promoted him to the top spot in 2019, but he only lasted three seasons before he was fired.
“Like anything, you learn so much,” he said. “If you’re a first-time starter, the first time you’re a position coach, first time you were a coordinator, but there’s really nothing like being a head coach. I mean, even just now the familiarity of the job itself. The last 24 hours since touching down here in Durham. So, you’re aware. I’ve joked it’s like parenting. The fact you’re born on this planet means that you obviously have parents somewhere, you get to watch your parents and you think you have some sort of idea of what it’s like until you bring your firstborn home and then it’s like, ‘Whoa, where’s the instruction manual for this thing, right?’ I think after your first year as a head coach, I think you get your sea legs underneath you a little bit more.”
He went 21-15 in three years with the Canes, taking the team to a pair of bowl games and finishing in the Top 25 once. A slow start to his third season, however, soured the fans and boosters on him, and even a strong finish to that year couldn’t save his job.
“I felt that our second and third year at Miami, I thought we were in the process, on the way of building a really strong culture,” he said. “The 12 ACC wins the last two years. We won four out of five to end the last season, so we felt like we were on the way. We understand again, you’re in this profession, you understand what it is, but you’re always learning. It’s just like what you would demand from the players. You’re always learning.”
Diaz will have to learn on the fly in his first few weeks at Duke. More than a half-dozen contributors from last year’s team, including quarterback Riley Leonard and running back Jordan Waters, are in the transfer portal, and the early national signing day is fast approaching. He’ll have to hire a staff of assistants, lock down the early signing class and work the portal. He’s already convinced running back Jaquez Moore to withdraw from the portal and return to Duke, so he’s off to a strong start.
Diaz quoted an unnamed Duke player when explaining why he took the job.
“This,” he said, “is a direct quote: ‘When we’re on campus, we’re surrounded by the best people in the world, and when we come back into our locker room, we think we have the best locker room in the world.’ And that’s it. That’s the something about Duke. That is the culture, that is the key. That’s the most important thing and that is the thing to me right now that is so worthy of protecting.”
It’s also worthy of wearing the chef’s hat and throwing a doll into the air.
