The return of swag to U | Bleacher's report

In his left hand, Manny Diaz is holding a comic Cuban chain necklace. To his right, he hangs on another necklace with Cuban links of a comic size. The shutter of a local newspaper photographer breaks, again and again, until Diaz, relieved, throws all that gold – about 13 pounds of buzzing blingues in South Florida, with green and gold sapphire pendants at the ends of each-on a table.

There is something in the pose that is almost self-parodying, and Diaz, the first-year head coach of the 45-year-old Miami Hurricanes, is quite aware of this. Hurrying down a hallway inside Miami's rapidly expanding football complex (several illuminated photos of a former Hurricane student, from Ed Reed to Michael Irvin, to Warren Sapp) ), he admits that it's always strange to pose with his flamboyant creations, known as business turnover chains. This is not exactly his style, but it is part of a narrative, and it may be that no coach understands better the power of a good story than Diaz.

Prior to the 2017 season, while he was defensive coordinator in Miami under former coach Mark Richt, Diaz had envisioned the idea of ​​a chain of business numbers. He had one created with the help of a local jeweler and the advice of elders Vince Wilfork in Miami, who happened to be in the store when the call from one of Diaz's defensive assistants arrived. Maybe a string of rope, the assistant said.

"No, man," Wilfork said. "We have to make the Cuban connection. "

Wilfork realized that the chain had to be on top, a reflection of South Florida Tony Montanapenchant for extravagance. It was supposed to serve as a public reward to players who forced a fumble or interception in defense, but it was also a tribute to the blustering ethics of this football program and that city. After having become the biggest football success in 2017, a new match has been designed for the 2018 season.

Diaz insists that he never imagined that the chain of turnover would immediately become such a glaring symbol, the most recognizable marketing tool for a program that is a generation out of its heyday in the 1980s and 1990. But at the same time, he understands the power of symbols, especially in a city like Miami, which has long embraced radical gestures and great personalities. Diaz cheeky Twitter account reflects that as has made his grand entrance to the Miami spring tour with boosters on a $ 7 million yacht. "It gives you an avenue," says Diaz about social media, "where you can create and control stories."

In narrative terms, it is possible that no coach from Miami's history has been so closely linked to the image of this city as Diaz. Not only did he grow up as a grandson of a Cuban immigrant, but his father, Manny Diaz Sr., was a lawyer and was mayor of Miami from 2001 to 2009.

As in politics, Manny Diaz Jr. knows that imaging is part of the coaching process here. This is part of what he recently called "creating value" around the program. People expect a certain attitude from the Miami sideline, as was the case when the Hurricanes regularly won national championships and displayed the kind of fanfaron that foreshadowed the media era. social. And the question surrounding the program since its last national championship in 2001 is virtually the same every year: when will Miami get that level of bluster? return?

Alan Diaz / Associated Press

The answer to this question, for Diaz, begins with taking the pulse of the city itself.

"Miami is just a very unique place," says Diaz. "It's a place where people want to come to be able to dance in the clubs, go to the beaches and listen to music. And there is a specific way to win here that fits the identity of this community. these Miami teams have perfectly matched the culture of this city. "

---

It has not been easy to find a coach capable of recreating this success in Miami. Three senior coaches have passed through the Coral Gables University Campus since Larry Coker, the last to win a national title, was sacked in 2006. Two of them, Richt and Randy Shannon, were out of control. Miami's past successful players (including an Orange Bowl bid for Richt in 2017), but never completely reclaimed the debauchery of glory days. The other, Al Golden, was a Penn State graduate who had tried to turn Miami into something more vanilla and ended up being hated by his own base of alumni.

Diaz is none of those things. He did not play college football in Miami. In fact, he did not play at all at university football. After growing up reading local Miami sports pages, he studied journalism at Florida State and earned a production assistant job at ESPN for several years before taking a front-run job at Mickey Andrews. , FSU's defensive coordinator. His insight and intelligence allowed him to slowly climb the ladder from the state of NC to the state of Middle Tennessee to the state of Mississippi.

Finally, after a well-known failure as a defensive coordinator in Texas (he was sacked after a disastrous match against BYU in 2013) and a successful stint as Mississippi State's defensive coordinator, Diaz returned to his hometown. And after briefly serving as head coach of Temple after last season, he returned to Miami 18 days later, when Richt suddenly announced his retirement.

The unconventional course of Diaz makes him the ideal coach for a program that does not fit into any of the typical college football boxes. It's a private university located in a big city, two things that are all rare in the higher spheres of sport. In fact, the Miami program was essentially a reflection after the 1980s, when coach Howard Schnellenberger made himself a name among the sport's elite by recruiting local talent, much of which came from the tough neighborhoods of the city. It's almost as if hurricanes became an extension of Miami's ego as it became a big American city. And Diaz has seen it all with his own eyes, which is why he is so aware of the program's image.

"He brings an awareness of this city that is unlike any other person around me," said Miami cornerback coach Mike Rumph, a South Florida native who was part of the final team. in Miami. "He knows what the city will react to and what they respect the most." As soon as he became head coach, people thought that someone else was running on his Twitter But this man is smart and he is very spiritual, is calculated from stopping a boat up to the revenue stream to social media. "

The slogan – branding, if you want to call it that – was used by Diaz with the local media to create a "New Miami". This essentially means the transition from "old Miami" to the era of social media. The players Miami recruits were not even born the last time the Hurricanes won a national title. Several current players have said that they had learned the existence of the past by watching either ESPN 30 for 30 in these teams, or clips from clips on YouTube. Some of them, such as Michael Irvin II, son of the Hall of Fame recipient, and cornerback Al Blades Jr., whose father and two uncles have played for the Hurricanes, have heard of these glorious years for almost all their lives. lives.

"These Miami teams were relentless," says Blades. "And the problem is that many people who know these Miami teams do not even know who the coaches were – it was up to the players to lead this team and become a championship team."

This is the backbone that Diaz hopes to put in place to justify all this turbulence. Over the years, like everyone else in the program, he insisted, Miami won the national championships under four different coaches: Schnellenberger, Jimmy Johnson, Dennis Erickson and Coker. For Diaz, this symbolizes what has long allowed this program to be as faithful as it was: it was probably the first university football team in the country to allow its players to take control of the program – and yes, sometimes it may have led to recruiting violations and excesses on the ground, but so be it.

This is why so many former graduates have a tendency to come back and talk about the grueling workouts that led them to win national championships. Even the Hurricanes' cloakroom was paid for – and bears the name of it – perhaps Miami's most famous alum: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

Diaz welcomed these alums, as well as former coaches, in the fold.

As a reward for successful players on and off the field, it sometimes allows them to wear helmets tinted on their helmets during training, much like the late security of Sean Taylor in Miami. Former players regularly show up in the weight room and talk to the team; A current player recalled a tearful speech in the fitness room of former linebacker Jonathan Vilma, who recounted how the competitive mentality of Miami had shaped him as a person.

Diaz acknowledges that for the Hurricanes to truly win back that braggart, the first thing to do is to reinforce the player-driven work ethic that made the Hurricanes so confident. To do this, you need of course talent and depth. This is the main reason why Diaz claims to have relied so heavily on the fashionable instrument dubbed the transfer portal this year, among the players that he attracted, there was Tate Martell, a state transfer from Ohio, who recently lost the starting quarterback position to rookie Jash Williams (Martell would be s & # 39; lead as wide receiver).

And that's not fair Martell. Eight of Miami's stock market players are transfers, including former UCLA defender Jaelan Phillips, the best prospect Bubba Bolden, former receiver of Buffalo, K.J. Osborn, who was one of the faces of the program at the ACC Media Days this summer. Six of the 22 best players on 247Sports Transfer Portal Ranking was found in Miami, which allowed Diaz to catch up in his work, the young alignment he inherited and a top-ranked recruiting class 27th national.

Diaz insists that the transfer portal matches Miami's aggressive reputation, was more of a coincidence than a strategy. But the idea of ​​storing the right kind of talent wherever you can find it fits its larger ideal.

"When you really expand things to the whole program, it's not about"Why can not we bring back that swaggering air?"Diaz says." It's like,What is the standard that was defined here in the first place? And the way to do it is often the work provided during the off season and the nature of our guys who participate in the practice. It's this idea to know that if you go out someday, someone might take your job. And you could never get it back. "

---

This ability to understand both the overall picture of Miami – "the view at 30,000 feet", as told by the co-defensive coordinator, Ephraim Banda – and the daily narrative about what drives his players is what Diaz's long-time assistants say it stands out. Sometimes, they say, Diaz can almost seem distant, but they insist that it's usually because he's lost in his thoughts. He is the opposite of reckless; he thinks about everything from Power Point parables that he shares with his team to the workout clips that he shares with the fanbase.

These assistants also say that it bothered Diaz enormously to have given up his work in the temple as he had done. Banda and his defensive co-coordinator, Blake Baker, have been working with Diaz since his stint in Texas, and both insist that he's not the kind of coach who pursues his ego from one job to the other. When Richt retired less than three weeks after Diaz took the Temple post, he found himself in an impossible situation. Once Miami Sports Director Blake James contacted Diaz, how was he able to turn down the position he thought he'd held since becoming a coach?

"I know how difficult it was for him because I know how much he values ​​people," said Banda. "There are many people in this profession who are not like that."

In order to take on the job of his dreams, Diaz was ready to make his reputation successful. And now that he's back, he plans to stay as long as he can. It will not be easy There is undeniable agitation here: although he is a former player and himself from Miami, Randy Shannon was fired after three consecutive appearances in the cup. Diaz must quickly win football matches while presenting the right image. He must find a way to marry the idea of ​​"New Miami" with the idea of ​​"Old Miami". It means connecting to the past while allowing players to find their own way.

"For years, many kids have talked about swag, and I always tell the team that we launched the loot, "says Rumph, the former cornerback turned coach. They can not take that for themselves. They must create their own identity. It must be unique. "

It remains to be seen what this looks like and if it will ever happen, but there is no doubt that Diaz has a meticulous vision to lead his team there. In February, a story online that Diaz had acted in "old Miami" in a high school training clinic, preventing coaches from attending group sessions of Florida state staff by offering them free beer in a separate room.

In an interview on the radio a few weeks later, Diaz did not confirm or deny l & # 39; history. Part of it, he said, was an "Internet tradition", but in a world dominated by social media, this tradition may be enough for Manny Diaz and Miami to control again the story of university football.