Manny Diaz spent two successful seasons as defensive coordinator at Penn State before landing another head coaching job in the ACC on Thursday night.
Barry Reeger | AP file photo
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This was always the pitch for Manny Diaz to come to Penn State.
A day after being replaced as head coach at Miami, Diaz got a call from James Franklin, who was looking for a defensive coordinator — a job that could provided talent to work with and an opportunity to boost his profile.
And that’s exactly what happened. Two years later, Diaz is already back to leading a program in a major conference.
Diaz is returning to the ACC after landing the head coaching job at Duke on Thursday. He leaves the Nittany Lions after two strong seasons that saw his unit lead the nation in total defense in 2023.
It also means the Lions will have interim coordinators on both sides of the ball for their Peach Bowl matchup with Ole Miss on Dec. 30. Though Penn State has already been through one coordinator search in the past month — replacing the fired Mike Yurcich with Kansas’ Andy Kotelnicki — he won’t fully get started until after the bowl game.
Assistants Ty Howle and Ja’Juan Seider will continue to run the offense for the rest of the month, and a similar situation will unfold on defense.
When Diaz’s predecessor, Brent Pry, left to become head coach at Virginia Tech after the 2021 regular season, safeties coach Anthony Poindexter served as interim coordinator for the bowl game. Poindexter could be a candidate for the full-time job this time around, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if a national search ensued with the success of Pry and Diaz in the role likely attracting plenty of interest.
It’s another critical decision for Franklin as Penn State heads into the next era of college football in 2024 as the College Football Playoff expands to 12 teams and the Big Ten gets tougher with the addition of four marquee programs from the Pac-12.
DUKE PERSPECTIVE
(AP) — Diaz replaces Mike Elko, who was hired by Texas A&M.
The move marks a return for Diaz to the ACC as well as the state of North Carolina. In addition to three seasons as Miami’s coach, he spent six seasons on Chuck Amato’s staff from 2000-05 at North Carolina State, about 20 miles from Duke’s campus in Durham.
Diaz went 21-15 at Miami from 2019-21 while reaching two bowl games in his only head-coaching stint. He also went 16-9 in ACC play, but the school fired him on the same day it hired current coach Mario Cristobal in an attempt to hasten a return to the national elite.
Diaz has spent the last two seasons with the Nittany Lions both as coordinator and linebackers coach. His defense finished in the top 20 of the FBS rankings in total and scoring defense in 2022, and stands at No. 1 in total defense (223.3 yards) and No. 3 in scoring defense (11.4) this season as Penn State (10-2) prepares to face Ole Miss in the Peach Bowl.
Diaz also had stops as defensive coordinator at Miami, Mississippi State, Louisiana Tech, Texas and Middle Tennessee.
Elko’s departure after 16 wins in two seasons marked an unusually short coaching tenure in Durham.
The last time a Duke coach stayed three or fewer seasons came when Steve Spurrier left for Florida after a 1987-89 run that included the program’s last ACC title in his final season. Elko and Spurrier are the only Duke coaches to stay three or fewer years since 1925, spanning the Blue Devils’ time in the Southern Conference before becoming a charter ACC member in 1953.
Elko won nine games and a bowl in his debut season, then guided Duke to a seven-win regular season with a weekend win against Pitt. This year’s team opened with a rout of preseason ACC favorite Clemson, cracked the AP Top 25 amid a 4-0 start and even hosted ESPN’s “College GameDay” for the first time in football — after multiple visits for the storied men’s basketball program — ahead of a ranked-vs-ranked matchup against Notre Dame.
Duke (7-5) is set to face Troy in the Birmingham Bowl on Dec. 23.
This marks the third hire for one of the school’s marquee programs in Nina King’s nearly three years as athletic director, following Elko’s arrival and Jon Scheyer’s ascension as the designated successor to Mike Krzyzewski when the Hall of Fame basketball coach retired in 2022.