Elisa Diaz had prepared one of her grandson’s favorite breakfast meals and placed the dish on the dining room table, urging the young boy to eat while the food was still hot.

But 7-year-old Manny, clutching the sports section of the Miami Herald’s morning edition, had other plans: the results and box scores from yesterday’s late-starting games would take precedence over pancakes.

It was a routine Elisa was quite familiar with. The Cuban grandmother would cook Manny’s breakfast every day, only to watch him read the sports page at length as his food sat on the table. “He’s always loved sports,” she recalls.

Today, Manuel Alberto (Manny) Diaz II is a 45-year-old man with a wife and three sons. His grandmother no longer cooks his breakfast, only an occasional pot of his favorite meal—red bean stew.

But what hasn’t changed is his love of sports. It is a passion that persisted throughout his years as a studentathlete at Miami Country Day High School—where he competed in football, basketball, and baseball—and as an assistant coach at collegiate football programs across the nation.

Now, that passion is as powerful as ever as Diaz takes the head coaching reins of the Miami Hurricanes’ storied football program.

Miami born and bred, Diaz, who had served as the University’s defensive coordinator since 2016, calls it his “dream job.” He grew up cheering for the Hurricanes, attending games at the Orange Bowl in Little Havana with his father, former Miami Mayor Manuel “Manny” Diaz, a School of Law alumnus who left Cuba in 1961.

He was just 9 years old when the Hurricanes defeated a powerful Nebraska team 31-30 in the Orange Bowl on Jan. 2, 1984, to win its first national championship, and the press conference where he was introduced as Miami’s 25th head football coach fell exactly 35 years later to the day that Miami won that title.

Sterling would always joke that he was going to get the South Carolina head coaching job, and he said he was going to take me with him. That kind of set the bug in me, made me realize that [coaching] could be something that I could do.

“For the 9-year-old kid who was up past his bedtime watching Kenny Calhoun bat that ball down, and watching the ’Canes storm the field—the fact that I’m here, standing in front of you now as head coach of the University of Miami— if you need more evidence that this is a God story, then that’s it,” says Diaz.

The Hurricanes faithful, who have yearned for a sixth national championship ever since Miami won its last some 18 years ago, are hoping Diaz will help write more Miami football history.

Diaz took a different route to the coaching profession. After high school, he wanted to remain close to football, but he knew it just wouldn’t be as a player. So he studied sports journalism at Florida State University.

He didn’t catch the coaching bug until he started working as a production assistant at ESPN, where he got to know NFL analyst and former Green Bay Packers wide receiver Sterling Sharpe. “We’d do the Monday Night Countdown show and go out to dinner,” Diaz recalls. “Sterling would always joke that he was going to get the South Carolina head coaching job, and he said he was going to take me with him. That kind of set the bug in me, made me realize that [coaching] could be something that I could do.”

He had been at ESPN for two years. “It was stick or stay,” says Diaz. His wife, Stephanie, who was pregnant with their first child at the time, encouraged him to “roll the dice.” So, along with his wife, he returned to Tallahassee, where Chuck Amato, the then-defensive coordinator at FSU, helped him get a part-time job stuffing envelopes in the school’s recruiting office. Though the work was humbling, it helped kindle a coaching career that would see Diaz follow Amato to North Carolina State as a graduate assistant and then full-time linebackers coach.

Defensive coordinator jobs at Middle Tennessee State (2006-2009), Mississippi State (2010 and 2015), Texas (2011-2013), and Louisiana Tech (2014) would follow before Diaz landed with former head coach Mark Richt at the University of Miami in 2016.

Just before the 2018 season had ended, Diaz accepted the head-coaching job at Temple University but still coached Miami’s defense in its bowl game against Wisconsin two days after Christmas.

When he awoke on the morning of Dec. 30, 2018, Diaz busied himself by identifying potential assistants he could hire to lead his staff at Temple. Then, later that day, came the news that jolted not only him and the ’Canes community of players and fans, but the rest of the college football world as well: Richt, who had restored the Miami program to relevance, going 26-13 in a three-year stint, announced his retirement.

A whirlwind series of events would follow, and before day’s end, Diaz was named Miami’s new head coach. He was staying put, having never really left.

“I’m excited about what’s next.”