'Follow your bliss': How Manny Diaz went from TV studio to coach ahead of return to NC State

The route Duke football coach Manny Diaz took to become a college football coach began in a darkened television production studio.

That’s where Diaz, who never played college football, ended up after he completed his degree in communication at Florida State in 1995. At the time, he believed the only path he had into a career in sports was through television, something he pursued with a two-year internship with cable sports network ESPN.

For another two years, Diaz sat in an ESPN studio in Bristol, Connecticut, breaking down film for the cable network’s NFL pregame show. Even though he had never played football for the Seminoles, he developed a passion for the game and an eye for talent and strategy.

“When I was in college, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be [in] newspapers or television, but I knew I wanted to be in sports,” Diaz said in a 2002 interview. “I went to ESPN with the intent of getting on air. I spent two years working with Chris Berman and Mike Tirico and got pretty close to Sterling Sharpe.

“We would watch Monday Night Football at the Outback Steakhouse in Bristol and talk about football. He used to joke about getting into coaching, which is something I had a bug to do.”

He finally decided to take the leap after going with broadcaster Tom Jackson to interview Bill Parcells during the week of Super Bowl XXXI between the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers in New Orleans.

“I wasn’t working, I just wanted to meet [Patriots coach] Parcells,” Diaz said. “Sitting there at that moment, there were two chairs, both with guys who were arguably at the top of their professions. I was sitting there listening to the dialogue and thinking to myself: Best case scenario, which would I rather be doing?

“No question, I would rather be in Parcells’ chair, answering questions instead of asking them. It’s not even close. I decided to try to pursue getting into coaching.”

He returned to his home state of Florida, where his father happened to be the mayor of Miami, and eventually returned to Tallahassee, where he was introduced to Seminole head coach Bobby Bowden’s associate head coach, a fellow named Chuck Amato.

Amato had received a telephone recommendation from Sharpe, whom he had once recruited, about Diaz and was interested in letting Diaz work as a volunteer in the Seminole recruiting office.

“He was just so, so sharp,” Amato said just before NC State played Notre Dame in the 2003 Gator Bowl. “He is super intelligent, with a lot of common sense. He had both common sense and street sense. I was told by [Sterling] Sharpe, from ESPN, ‘I don’t know why this guy is doing this. If he stays here four or five years, he’ll be sitting in front of the cameras on SportsCenter.’”

It was not exactly glamorous work.

“I stuffed envelopes, I mailed out tapes, I made copies of tapes, I addressed envelopes,” Diaz said. “It was strictly mailroom kind of stuff, just to be in the office. When it became recruiting season, I was the guy that picked kids up at the airport, handled the dirty work jobs. I was able to show the coaches that I was dependable, even in a small role.

“You know how coaches are, when a job came open, they aren’t interested in conducting any big searches. I was standing there, and they said, “You seem like a decent enough guy. You do it.’”

The coaching bug tugged hard at Diaz and shortly after Florida State beat Virginia Tech 46-29 in the 2000 Sugar Bowl, he accepted a job as a graduate assistant at NC State under Amato.

Within two years, Diaz was elevated to a full-time spot first as the Wolfpack’s linebackers coach, then as the safeties coach for a defense that was ranked No. 1 in the nation in 2004. He was with the Pack until Amato parted ways with NC State in 2006.

That began the typical vagabond life for Diaz, who has been an assistant coach at Middle Tennessee (2006-09) under Rick Stockstill, Mississippi State (2010 and 2015) under Dan Mullen, Texas under Mack Brown (2011-13), Louisiana Tech (2014) under Skip Holtz, Miami (2016-18) under Mark Richt and Penn State (2022-23) under James Franklin.

Diaz got his first chance to become a head coach at Temple, leaving Miami just as Richt made the decision to retire. After just two weeks as head coach of the Owls, Miami offered Diaz a chance to return home as head coach. In three seasons, he compiled a 21-15 record. He was fired after leading the 2021 team to a 7-5 record.

Diaz landed on his feet at Penn State for Franklin, but jumped at the opportunity to take another head coaching job last winter when Duke was looking to fill its vacancy.

Diaz returns to Carter-Finley this weekend, when Duke plays the Wolfpack Saturday at 3:30 p.m. It will be his second time back on his old grounds, but the first time with actual fans in the stands. He was the head coach at Miami when the Hurricanes came to Carter-Finley in a COVID-limited game.

“I had six really, really good years there, including one of the best years in school history by beating Notre Dame and winning 11 games,” Diaz said earlier this week. “Two of the great players on that team are on their staff – Dantonio Burnette, who is their strength coach, was our middle linebacker, and Freddie Aughtry-Lindsay coaches on their staff.

“Stephen Tulloch, who played for me there, was on the sideline at Miami this past week. There are a lot of good people. There were fun times.”

Those six years were the foundation of Diaz’s coaching education and his launching pad to a career in college football.
 
“I was still really young in this profession,” Diaz said. “So I learned a lot of great lessons seeing a program built from Day 1. Having a front-row seat of how difficult it is to try to get a program into orbit is one of the hardest things a head coach has to do. Gravity is relentless.”

Diaz has never regretted making a dramatic career change, even with all the moving he’s done in his coaching career. And ever since he was at NC State, he’s given similar advice to those looking to follow their dreams.

“The only advice I have [for others] is follow your bliss. Everyone I knew who was in their 20s was either not making any money and doing what they wanted to do, or making a lot of money and not doing what they wanted.

“For me, it was a pretty amazing combination of timing and luck,” he said in 2002. “Things have worked out beyond expectations.”

Tim Peeler is a regular contributor to “The Wolfpacker” and can be reached at [email protected].