Miami football may have just foreshadowed Manny Diaz’s fate
Miami football is in a state of transition with athletic director Blake James leaving the university, which should also spell the end for Manny Diaz.
Coming off wins over NC State and Pitt, Manny Diaz might have been feeling a bit better about his job security at the start of November.
Now he should be sweating.
On Monday, the Hurricanes parted ways with athletic director Blake James, calling it a mutual decision.
Whether or not you buy the mutualness of it all, it bodes very poorly for the head coach.
Miami athletic director Blake James is out and Manny Diaz should be next
Diaz isn’t a particularly popular figure at the moment and not having the backing of the man who hired him any longer may be the final nail in the coffin for him.
However, it’s all about the timing. Diaz may very well get another season simply because the timeline for hiring a new athletic director isn’t likely to be very quick. It’s very unlikely Miami will hire a new AD who is prepared to fire a sitting head coach and hire a new one all within the next few weeks. It could all go down in the new year, or Diaz could end up coaching for his job in 2022. We’ll see.
James took over as Miami’s athletic director in 2013. He inherited Al Golden and fired him in 2015. He hired Mark Richt to lead the program as an alumnus looking to bring some of his success from Georgia along with him. However, he spent three years with the Hurricanes, going 26-13 before retiring after the 2018 season.
Diaz was promoted from his role as defensive coordinator under Richt but only after taking over as head coach at Temple for all of two weeks.
His tenure as head coach at Miami hasn’t been much prettier. He went 6-7 in 2019 and managed an 8-3 record in 2020, but his team is 5-5 this season and just lost to rival Florida State.
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