The following is a Q&A I did for the Greensboro News & Record with current Miami coach Manny Diaz prior to the 2002 Gator Bowl, back when he was an NC State assistant talking about his non-traditional path to becoming a football coach. Friday night at Carter-Finley Stadium will be the first time he has faced NC State as a head coach.
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AGE: 28
POSITION: Linebackers coach for NC State's football team
FAMILY: Wife, Stephanie; Son, Colin, 5
COLLEGE: B.A. in Communications, Florida State University, 1995
BACKGROUND: Let's put it this way: Manny Diaz didn’t take the typical path to becoming a football coach, just like his father didn't take the typical path to becoming a politician.
The 1995 graduate of Florida State, with a degree in communications, figured the only way he could have a career in sports was as a watcher, either for a newspaper or with a television crew. So he went to work after he graduated at ESPN.
During his two years there, he broke down film for the cable network's Sunday morning NFL shows, something he does now on a regular basis as a Wolfpack assistant coach.
But he got a bug to coach in 1997, moved back to Tallahassee and begged his way into a volunteer job in the FSU football recruiting office. The guy who interviewed him? Seminole assistant Chuck Amato, who got strong recommendations from ESPN NFL analyst Sterling Sharpe.
""The biggest thing that ESPN taught me was professionalism,'' Diaz said. ""The big lesson I learned was that going from ESPN to Florida State football was that the level of professionalism and attention to detail were the same at both places.''
When Amato became head coach at N.C. State in 2000, be brought Diaz with him as a graduate assistant. Last year, after two defensive assistants left, Amato hired Diaz as a full-time assistant.
Diaz never played college football, but Amato saw a spark that impressed him.
""He was just so, so sharp,'' Amato said. ""He is super intelligent, with a lot of common sense. He had 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.'
"He probably would have."
Similarly, Diaz's father never expected to become Mayor of Miami. But the elder Diaz was thrown into the spotlight as the lawyer for U.S. relatives of Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy whose mother died as they tried a daring escape from Cuba.
The elder Diaz became mayor last November after a hotly contested runoff.
The News & Record's Tim Peeler
talked with the younger Diaz recently, as he helped the Wolfpack prepare for
Wednesday's game against Notre Dame in the 58th Gator Bowl.
Q. You spent a couple of years working at ESPN after you graduated college. How did you get from there to here?
A. From a very young age, I always wanted to be involved in sports. If I couldn't play, I figured the next best thing would be sports journalism. 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. I got an opportunity to intern at ESPN while I was in college and I went back there with the intent of getting on-air with sports television. After I was there for about a year and a half, working on the Sunday morning NFL shows with Chris Berman and Mike Tirico. I got really close with Sterling Sharpe in particular. After we finished the Monday night Countdown show, would go out to an Outback Steakhouse in Bristol, Conn., and we would watch the Monday night game and talk about football. He always joked about wanting to get into coaching. I had always had a bug to get into coaching, but I didn't think it was possible, because I didn't play in college. I was on this television track and thought that it was the next best thing. The pivotal moment for me came in 1997, we were covering the Super Bowl between the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers in New Orleans. I tagged along with Tom Jackson on an interview with Bill Parcells. I wasn't working, I just wanted to meet Parcells. Sitting there at that moment, there were two chairs, both with guys who were arguably a the top of their profession. I was sitting there listening to the dialog 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.
Q. That's a pretty big leap, especially since you had a good job at ESPN. Was it a difficult transition?
A. When you work at ESPN, that's kind of like an "Oh, wow" job. Your parents are proud of you. Then I called them on the phone and told them I was going to move back to Tallahassee, Fla., and try to volunteer in the football office because I have a dream to get into coaching. That doesn't fly too well. When I told my father the Parcells story, he said, "What makes you think you are ever going to be Bill Parcells?" The only answer I had was, "What makes you think I am ever going to be the guy asking the questions?" I went to FSU, volunteered for a year, then I got a low-level graduate assistant job, then I came up here with Coach Amato.
Q. What exactly were you doing in that first year as a volunteer?
A. If you are a college graduate, under NCAA rules, you can't volunteer in any football capacity. The only place they could put me was in the football recruiting office, which was separate from football. I stuffed envelops, I mailed out tapes, I made copies of tapes, I addressed envelops. 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, handle 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.''
Q. So how exactly did you support yourself?
A. The key to the whole story is simple: I have a saint of a wife. To show you just how smart I am, when we moved to Florida State, we were expecting our first child. She had to support me for five years.
Q. Since you are getting ready to coach against Notre Dame in a New Year's Day bowl, I assume you don't have any regrets.
A. It was a pretty amazing combination
of timing and luck. Things have worked out beyond expectations.
Q. Would you recommend the same career path for someone else?
A. The only advice I have is follow
your bliss. Everyone I knew who was in their 20s was either not making any
money doing what they wanted to do, or making a lot of money and not doing what
they wanted.
Q. Give me a quick critique of how Chuck Amato handles the media.
A. The thing about Chuck is that he
enjoys being playful and people don't always understand that. He's a hard guy
to understand sometimes when he is being serious and when he is joking.
Sometimes, he likes it when people don’t understand the difference.
Q. How do you think the media in this area handles him and football in general?
A. I think it is improving. I still
wish every day the fans here could read something about one of their teams in
football. Some kind of news and notes. Football in places like Tallahassee is a
year-round deal. But I think attention to recruiting has gotten a lot more
intense. I think the thing that will help is that the teams are getting better.
I understand, nobody wants to read about a loser.
Q. You mentioned your dad earlier. It has to be a big advantage in recruiting to have someone who is the son of the mayor of Miami on staff, right?
A. Well, he did bring me up here before my dad was ever in politics, so it's not like it was because of that. He was the attorney for the Gonzalez family. He had never held any political office and he just went ahead and ran. He had some momentum and won. The best thing about his job right now is that there isn't much being written about him.
Q. Is coaching different than what you thought it would be?
A. Well, it's not that much different from television. It's a little bit of who you know and trying to get to a bigger market and such. Coaching is like parenting. Coaching is your personality. I am not a big yell-scream theatrics kind of guy. I am always kind of defensive of coaching. Especially football coaches. They are the ones who have the stereotype of being the big dumb guy with the hat, the whistle, the clipboard board and the polyester shorts hiked up too high, the ones who end up getting stuck teaching history in high school. To me, what I love about this, is that it is the most cerebral thing I have ever done. From an intellectual stand-point, it's the most stimulating thing I have ever done.
