11/5/2020 football Edit

Miami head coach Manny Diaz's roots include NC State

Tim Peeler

The Wolfpacker Contributor

This is what Florida State assistant head coach Chuck Amato told ESPN commentator and former All-Pro NFL wide receiver Sterling Sharpe when the latter called the Florida State football office in 1997 to recommend a possible graduate assistant for the Seminole football team.

This kid, in his 20s and out of school for more than two years, was a production assistant at the cable sports network. He had decided he wanted to go into coaching instead of television, an early-life career shift that is about as rare as a Miami cold spell.

“Understand, Chuck: This kid will be on the other side of the camera in just a few years if he wants to be,” Sharpe told Amato. “He’s really bright and has a great understanding of the game.”

Amato had no jobs, volunteer or otherwise, to offer on head coach Bobby Bowden’s staff. He had only advice for Sterling to pass along.

“Tell the kid to go take a urine test,” Amato said. “He must be on drugs.”

The thing is, Manny Diaz wasn’t. He was just ambitious and willing to take a non-paying position in the Florida State recruiting office, the only pathway he had to get his foot in the door.

Former NC State Wolfpack football assistant Manny Diaz. — Diaz was hired by Chuck Amato as a defensive grad assistant.

Now, he’s the head coach at Miami, in the city where he grew up as the son of a Cuban-born lawyer who was eventually elected mayor because of his involvement as the U.S. representative for Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle.

Diaz and his Hurricanes will play the Wolfpack this Friday night at Carter-Finley Stadium.

It’s a story of unbelievable and mythic proportions as Diaz brings his second edition of the Hurricanes to Carter-Finley for his first return since spending six seasons as a member of Amato’s (well-paid) staff from 2000-2005 until taking a job as defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee State.

He’s made several stops along the way, including Mississippi State, Louisiana Tech, Texas (where he was once fired by Mack Brown) and Miami. He twice worked at Mississippi State for Dan Mullen, who is now the head coach at Florida.

It’s a story that no one, not even the geniuses at ESPN’s 30-for-30, could possibly tell properly. So let’s leave it to Amato, who took a chance on Diaz a quarter century ago and beams like a proud dad over the former volunteer’s current station in life.

“So Sterling Sharpe calls up the football office one day out of the blue, and the secretary, because my office was beside hers, forwards the call to me,” Amato remembered.

“I, of course, knew who he was, and he probably knew who I was. He told me this kid really wanted to become a football coach.”

“What’s he doing now?” Bowden’s longtime right-hand man asked.

“He and his best friend [and future ESPN and NBC Sports announcer] Mike Tirico are breaking down film, and if they stay at it for a couple more years they will be on camera,” Sharpe said.

“They are both very smart. Manny happened to go to Florida State, so he thought it might be a good place for him to ask about a football job.”

Diaz graduated with a degree in communications in 1995, but was not part of the football program. ESPN hired him as a production assistant to make highlight tapes, short features and clips for analysis segments for the network right out of school.

“When I saw him, he wasn’t very big,” Amato recalled. “He said he played football, basketball and baseball at Miami Country Day. [Diaz was an honorable mention All-Miami-Dade selection in all three sports}, but we didn’t have anything at Florida State for him. We had all our coaches, all our grad assistants and all our volunteers.

“We got on the phone, and I talked to him. He was from Miami, which is one of the places I always recruited for Florida State. We were just starting to use videotape instead of film, and, at the time, I was the only one who knew how to set it up. I asked about putting him in the recruiting office as a volunteer.

“I told Manny, 'You might be able to save me 10 minutes or so by doing the video. Then you can do whatever else needs to be done. Go pick up recruits at the airport. Answer the phone. But you aren’t going to be doing any coaching.'

“That was right at the end of May, and I was getting ready to go to Miami for a month recruiting. He walked in my office right before I left and asked what he could do while I was gone.”

“Look,” Amato told him. “I ain’t coming home for a month. Here is what I want you to do. Take this tape and break it down. I want to know what all the receivers are going to do. How many steps they take. Where they make their cuts. Where do they make their plants, at the top of the number, the middle of the number or the bottom of the number?

“Does the quarterback ever throw to him? Does he catch it? Anything any receiver does, I want it on a piece of paper. That would save me a lot of time.”

When Amato returned from Miami, Diaz had done exactly what he wanted, unlike the other volunteer who had the same task.

“He was spot-on,” Amato said. “Anything I asked him for, he was able to do it. It took the other kid five times to get it right. I said to myself right then, 'This guy is pretty sharp.'”

Diaz was eventually added as the defensive cinematographer in 1998. The following season, the Seminoles played Virginia Tech for the national championship, and Amato was being courted by NC State, his alma mater and the place where he began his coaching career, to replace Mike O’Cain.

“We were in New Orleans getting ready for the Sugar Bowl, and I grabbed Manny,” said Amato. “I told him, 'I might get the chance to go to NC State,' and I would take him with me as a graduate assistant. I told him I was going to give him a chance, even though he had never coached before. And after he did that for a while, I would make him an assistant coach.”

Amato took the job a few days after the Seminoles beat the Hokies for the national title and, as promised, he made Diaz part of his million-dollar staff, even though it was just a low-paying defensive graduate assistant, a position he held for the first year at State.

“The first full-time job I gave him was with the linebackers,” Amato remembered. “He would sit in the position room with me and see how I would operate with a bunch of kids. He would always ask me, ‘Did I do anything wrong?’ He rarely ever did.”

Amato kept moving Diaz, from linebackers assistant to safeties and special teams to the defensive backfield. Before every game, Diaz would harken back to his ESPN roots and find a funny or relevant video clip to show the team the night before the game.

Famously, that included Jim Valvano’s “Never Give Up” speech the night before the Wolfpack beat Florida State in 2001, the first time an ACC team ever defeated the Seminoles on their home field.

Then, in January 2006, Amato was at the annual football coaches’ convention in Orlando when Rick Stockstill was beginning to build his first staff at Middle Tennessee State. Stockstill asked about hiring Diaz as his defensive coordinator.

“I tell you what, Rick,” Amato told him. “If you don’t hire Manny, I hope you lose every game you play.”

Diaz spent four years in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, then went to Mississippi State for a season before going to Texas to serve as defensive coordinator under Brown. Early in the 2013 season, Brown relieved Diaz of his duties, following a game in which Brigham Young rushed for a school-record 550 yards.

Diaz landed for a season at Louisiana Tech, then returned to Mississippi State in 2015, where he was on the soggy sidelines for the Bulldogs in their 51-28 win over the Wolfpack in the Belk Bowl.

A few days later, former Florida State assistant and Georgia head coach Mark Richt hired Diaz as his defensive coordinator when he was named head coach of the Hurricanes. Diaz spent a successful three seasons leading his hometown defense and is credited with introducing the "Turnover Chain" to give to any defender who causes a fumble or interception.

Following the 2018 season, Diaz was hired as the head coach at Temple — a job he kept for just 11 days because Richt surprised the school by announcing his retirement on Dec. 30. Diaz jumped at the chance to return to his hometown, leading the Hurricanes to a 6-7 record and an appearance in the Independence Bowl in his inaugural season.

Amato still maintains close contact via text and phone calls with Diaz, and couldn’t be prouder of his one-time unpaid protégé, not only for his obvious success but for his ambition to be successful.

“He did it because he is very, very smart and he’s not afraid to work,” Amato noted. “Many kids today don’t want to start at the bottom and work their way up. They want to start in the middle, or at the top, and go from there.

“Manny had a good job, but he wanted something different, and he was willing to make the sacrifice to get what he wanted.”

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to The Wolfpackerand can be reached at tmpeeler@ncsu.edu.