North Carolina State University Athletics
Diaz Works His Way Into Coaching
10/20/2004 12:00:00 AM | Football
Oct. 20, 2004
While most college coaches come from similar backgrounds of playing, volunteering, assisting and just generally hanging around the game their whole lives, NC State assistant coach Manny Diaz comes from a slightly different background. The safeties coach and special teams coordinator previously served as a defensive cinematographer at Florida State after working at ESPN.
"It is a little peculiar," said Diaz, who graduated from Florida State in 1995. "I always wanted to be involved with sports and I figured that the next best thing was to be in sports journalism. I played all kinds of sports throughout high school, but when I went to college, I left my playing career behind. I became the sports editor for the school newspaper, had a TV show on campus and secured an internship at ESPN, which led to a full-time job there. I figured I was living the life and was doing exactly what I wanted to do."
As with everything in his life, Diaz had been driven to succeed. The Miami, Fla., native graduated from high school a year early and four years later left Florida State with a degree and a full-time job at ESPN. So it should be no surprise how quickly he settled down with his girlfriend Stephanie.
"We met at Florida State. We both graduated the same year and my claim to fame is that I tricked her into moving to Connecticut with me when I took that job at ESPN out of college. [Stephanie hails from Coco Beach, Fla.] After graduating in May, we were married that December. It will be nine years this December and we have two boys now, Colin [6] and Gavin [1]."
Things seemed to be going according to plan for Diaz, until he met someone at work one day that changed his life.
"I had been working at ESPN for about a year and a half when I was in New Orleans covering the Super Bowl. We were interviewing Bill Parcells, who was coaching the New England Patriots. Bill Parcells has such an amazing presence. He's just one of those guys whoose reputation preceeds him and he becomes such a dominant force when he enters a room. It was a life-changing moment because I realized that while I had a pretty great job, it wasn't the next best thing. The next best thing was coaching. Coaching could really effect what was going on. I had always wanted to be in the inner circle and being in the press gave you some of that, but I realized that there was more and I wanted to be involved in the actual outcome of wins and losses. It was at that point that I decided to get into coaching."
Diaz figured his alma mater would be as good as any place to begin his coaching quest.
"I was very naive of how it all worked. I went down to Florida State and interviewed with Coach Amato and said that I would do anything and that I just wanted to help out. I didn't realize that after you graduate from college, you couldn't. There are no volunteer coaches allowed in college football. So it wasn't that great of an idea for me to quit my job at ESPN and move back to Tallahassee. They said that I could volunteer in the recruiting office, stuffing envelopes and mailing out things. It was office busy work, no different than you would be doing if you were volunteering at a law firm. Being around the office and being dependable paid off for me and when a film GA spot opened they gave it to me and that is how the whole thing got started."
That is when Diaz began his education. He would sit in on the defensive staff meetings with those coaches, learning as much as he could. There are no degrees awarded for that course of study, but Diaz kept his eyes and ears open, and probably most importantly, his mouth shut.
"The last thing they want is some young brat to come in and think that he knows all the answers. They're looking for someone whom they can teach, so I think that the biggest thing for me was to come in, soak up all of their knowledge and prove that I was dependable."
When Coach Amato took the job at NC State in 2000, he extended an invitation to Diaz to come with him and build a program like Florida State's in Raleigh. Diaz turned down Bobby Bowden's offer to be the defensive GA at Florida State and followed Amato to NC State. After spending a season as the defensive GA for the Wolfpack, Diaz was promoted to a full-time assistant coach in 2001.
"I think that the coolest thing for me has been to see the program develop from day one to now going on year five. At Florida State, that ship had been sailing for so long and was such a powerhouse. To come here and understand the effort and progress to get to that point where FSU was and to see how far we've come and how far we have to go has been really amazing."
While most coaches are quick to point out how far they still have to go, it's hard to ignore how far Amato's staff has come with the Wolfpack.
"We were sitting there in the Carter-Finley Fieldhouse that first January when we had that big snowfall, looking at this grass bank [where the Murphy Center is now] covered with snow and thinking, `what have we got ourselves into?' Now you look at the stadium, the Murphy Center, the scoreboard, the press box and even just having that grass bank bowled in makes such a difference."
Diaz is also looking forward to his new assignment this season. After working with the linebackers the last three years, Diaz took over as the safeties coach this past spring.
"It's fun. It's a little bit like playing a different instrument. It's still reading music, but you're on a different apparatus. The secondary was the group that I initially followed around when I was at Florida State, so this was a little bit of a coming home. Those guys are crazy. I love working with our guys in the secondary. You have to be a little bit nutty to be a defensive back. There is just no other way because of the position that you're put in. When I was coaching linebackers, you could always look behind us and there would be four DBs back there to make up for our mistakes. Now at safety the only one behind us is that back judge. That's been a big adjustment. The LBs are so much more involved in every play. Sometimes when it's a run, we get there and the play is already over. When we're involved, it's a make or break play. We've got no margin of error. That makes it real exciting."
What is the most exciting part of coaching? One would think it would be game days, and to an extent it is for Diaz too. But for him, it's mostly back behind closed doors, where he first learned the coaching game.
"Football gets a bad rap for not being intellectual, when it really is way more mental than people think. Everybody is tough and everyone wants to win. My favorite part of the job is when you're in the meeting room during the week with the defensive staff and you've got somebody who has presented you with a problem and you're sitting there, talking with each other, stimulating thought and coming together with a solution. Then presenting that to your players and watching it executed on Saturdays. That is pretty cool."
