UM’s Manny Diaz — the People’s Coach

It was just after 8 a.m. on a lazy August Saturday in Coral Gables.

Except that this particular Saturday, CanesFest — the preseason festival where Miami Hurricanes football fans mingle with their favorite players and coaches — was set to begin in four hours nearby on campus.

Just down the street and under the Metrorail tracks, tailgaters were already pitching their orange-and-green tents, firing up their barbecues, drinking adult beverages and tossing footballs.

“We were grilling some gator meat and we see this black Escalade pull up and some guy with flip-flops gets out,’’ said Jean “JD” Desilus, among South Florida’s most avid Hurricanes fans. “Suddenly we’re like, ‘Wow! It’s coach Manny Diaz!’ ”

Diaz not only began joining fans for selfies while shaking hands and happily signing footballs, he also thanked each one for the support and pulled out his own phone to record a video on Instagram Live.

“I was walking out of a convenience store across the street and saw those guys,’’ Diaz told the Miami Herald. “Fans were showing up four hours early, so I thought it would be fun to just kind of bop in and say hello. It’s important to connect with the people here and rekindle what the Miami Hurricanes have meant to this community.

“When you have an era of what we grew up in and then that era sort of goes away, everybody still has those memories and you just want to stoke some of those emotions.’’

Said Desilus, 44, known as “the Garbageman’’ because he works for Waste Management: “I’ve seen coaches like [Alabama’s] Nick Saban with more security around them than the president. Manny Diaz stops what he’s doing, joins us all by himself and shows love and respect.

“That,’’ the Garbageman said, “is ‘The New Miami.’ “

Or, as Diaz, the man who introduced UM’s wildly popular turnover chain, might say in one of his many social media posts: #TNM.

Now all he has to do is win, something that Diaz knows is a byproduct of intense work that leads to gradual improvement and, finally, if you have the right athletes, excellence.

The Hurricanes are eager to earn that first victory in their Atlantic Coast Conference opener Sept. 7 at North Carolina. Two days after losing 24-20 to the Florida Gators in a fierce, heart-pumping opener Aug. 24 at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Diaz was able to put a bit of perspective into the opener.

“Let’s keep the main thing the main thing,’’ Diaz said on his weekly WQAM radio stint. “We were up for the fight. And that was in question going in — especially because if you look at us the last few years against quote-unquote top-10 competition, that had not always been the case.

“Our guys understood. You could see the difference in our strain, in our effort, in our passion. We can’t lose sight of that because that’s going to give us a chance to win every game.”

Diaz told the Miami Herald just days before the season opener that “the thing that really matters is to just find a way to improve no matter what happens the first game, which is really what good teams do. To me, this season is about, No. 1, learning how to compete and play with an edge that resembles the Miami Hurricanes and, No. 2, understanding that if we do that, our level of execution on both sides of the ball will improve.

“What I know more than anything is that the belief of us fixing ourselves has to start internally. You’re not going to get crowned from the outside in. It always comes from the inside out.

“They’re not handing out trophies after Week 1.’’

Diaz, 45, has invigorated Hurricanes fans and the city of Miami — not to mention his own players — more than any coach in years, including predecessor Mark Richt, the longtime successful Georgia coach who was a former UM quarterback and hired Diaz as his defensive coordinator when they both began at UM in 2016.

The dignified, slow-talking, mellow Richt, also got fans buzzing, at least until they turned on him by 2018 for running a deficient offense, and further drew their wrath by seemingly mishandling the quarterback situation. Meanwhile, Diaz, the fast-talking, fiery, hyper on-field general who grew up in Miami going to Dolphins and Hurricanes games at the Orange Bowl with his father, the eventual Miami mayor, led an aggressive, ferocious defense that seemed to excel no matter what the final result. Despite its 7-6 record last season, UM finished fourth in the nation in total defense and first in team tackles for loss, passing defense and third-down conversion defense.

“We all have to be authentic to who we are from a personality standpoint,’’ said Diaz, when asked about Richt, now most appreciated for conceptualizing the impressive Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility, raising the funds (including $1 million of his own money) for it and making it a reality. “There are a lot of things that are core — the thing we really value — that are very similar. The tactics in which you go to achieve them may be different, but when you slice it open deep down, a lot the things that are really important to building this program didn’t change.

“Everybody wants to talk about the things that were not right with the program in the past, but there were so many things that were right and building to where we got in 2017 [with a 10-3 record]. And so you have to be able to be a little more surgical in trying to fix the things that need to be fixed and keep the heart of the program, which I think was one of the great things that Mark brought here.’’

Diaz constantly espouses living up to “the standard’’ of the old-time Canes who won national titles in 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 and 2001.

Former UM receiver Daryl Jones, who lined up opposite Andre Johnson in the 2002 (2001 season) Rose Bowl national championship game, watched a recent practice and said he is “loving this new generation of Hurricanes athletes’’ and is especially impressed with Diaz.

“I like what I’m hearing. I like what I’m seeing,’’ Jones said. “I like where his head is. I like the energy he brings to the team. The New Miami — some people are taking it the wrong way, like it’s something different.

“But the new Miami is really bringing back the old Miami in a new way.’’

“That’s 100 percent accurate,’’ Diaz said of Jones’ perception. “That’s totally the truth. That’s the whole point. We have to modernize some of our methods, but the script on how to win here has been written, and we’re just trying to hold everybody in the program accountable to it.’’

Diaz is not only known as “the people’s coach,” he is, according to his athletes and assistants, a player’s coach and coach’s coach. They say his energy level, intelligence and manner in which he values relationships and integrity make him a man easy to respect.

“I love that guy,” star linebacker Shaq Quarterman said. “It takes nothing for me to want to play for him as hard as I can. He has never lied to me. Play to the end of the whistle? He coaches to the end of the whistle.

“Coach Diaz is complicated. He wants to win, and he wants to win bad. And if you don’t want to win as bad as him, then you have to find another program.”

From a coach’s perspective, “it is so easy to get out of bed every morning and have that mentality of, ‘Do not fail that man,’ ’’ said UM strength and conditioning coach David Feeley of Diaz. “When he’s in the office and you go to speak to him, you better be on point, because whatever you tell him he takes wholeheartedly.

“Manny Diaz is who he says he is on a daily basis. And that is so powerful. There are no tricks, no gray areas. As long as you have that you can move forward with extreme confidence.”

UM defensive line coach/assistant head coach Todd Stroud, 55, who first met Diaz when Diaz was a graduate assistant at N.C. State and coached with him for several years, told his wife in the early 2000s that Diaz “will probably be a head coach one day and will have a meteoric rise in the profession.’’

“He is extremely intelligent, has a good sense of people and processes information a lot faster schematically than grunts like me,’’ Stroud said. “Very dynamic, very motivating. And you can tell that just by the style of his defenses over the years. Play hard, have fun, throw your body around — all those things he preaches are his personality.”

Cornerbacks coach Mike Rumph won a national title with Miami in 2001 and said Diaz reminds him of former UM defensive backs coach and current Chicago Bears defensive coordinator Chuck Pagano in the way he can break down a defense.

“If you watch film, Manny Diaz can tell you what all 22 players are doing with one click of the button,’’ Rumph said. “Not a lot of people have that vision.’’

Players gush about Diaz, mirroring their coaches in citing “integrity’’ and “intelligence’’ and “energy’’ and “caring’’ — with plenty of fun mixed in.

“It’s been awesome, dude,’’ sophomore tight end Brevin Jordan said of working with Diaz. “I wish you could see our meetings— he’s so funny. The dude is a character. When he says The New Miami, it’s The New Miami. I’m just glad to have him.’’