Manny Diaz elaborates on new recruiting philosophy for UM commits. OK, take visits, but... 

Manny Diaz created a stir on the national recruiting front last week when stories were written about a Hurricane Hotline interview he had recently about UM “changing the value of what it means to be a Miami Hurricane” in terms of additional recruiting visits for high school players who have pledged their commitments to the University of Miami.

WQAM radio host Joe Rose broached the subject to Diaz on Monday.

“You stirred it up pretty good nationally last week,’’ Rose said. “That led me to the bigger question... about verbal commitments [and] if you’ve committed to Miami you shouldn’t take trips. Could you talk more about that? It has become kind of a big story.”

Said Diaz: “You’d be amazed to know that some of the details weren’t colored in all the way. Simply what we’re saying is, No. 1, we have to create value of what it means to be committed to the University of Miami.”

Then, Diaz gave a retail merchandise analogy, but went on to elaborate in detail how Miami is not barring high school players who have pledged their allegiance to UM from visiting other schools. However, there could be a definite disadvantage in terms of the UM program for those who do take additional trips.

Here is what Diaz said:

“Again, just go back to sales. If you come into the store and someone holds the merchandise, there should be a value on holding the merchandise and that it’s harder to put it back down.

“And if you don’t create the value, and I mentioned this in terms of the football team. If we don’t create value of what it means to play for the Miami Hurricanes, that’s not going to come from the outside, that’s not going to come from the national media. That has to come from our the locker room.

“The same thing has to be true of the value of what it means to play for the University of Miami. We have to create that value from the inside. We have to make it mean something. So, again, where it all begins is we have a little bit of a different protocol of what it takes to become a commit, a little bit different than what it was in the past. But then once you are committed there are a series of guidelines of things that we think should follow.

“Look, you can’t stop someone from taking a visit. We’re never saying you can’t take a visit. What we’re simply saying is that if someone takes a visit we have to have the ability then to go look at other recruits at that position. Because we have been left at the altar in the past, right?

“We’ve had guys that said, ‘Hey, I’m only going. I just want to see…’ And that’s fine. We’re not sitting there saying ‘Well, forget it, you’re dropped.’ But what we’re saying is ‘We have to protect the University of Miami.’ That is our job. That is what this program is all about. It’s bigger than me and the players. It’s about the Hurricanes football program.

“And if a young man, says, ‘Look, I just want to go take a [visit],’ that’s totally fine. But we may have to bring in another guy at your position because just in case.’ We’ve told guys [that] it’s hard to be engaged and tell your fiancee, ‘Look, I just want to go out on a few more dates.’

“OK, that’s totally fine, you can do that. But we’re probably going to have to change a little bit of what it means to be engaged. That’s OK. So this is not anything where we’re holding a fine line or we’re dropping guys or anything like that. This is simply, ‘Look, this is the University of Miami.’ We have to create value. It has to mean something. And it’s our responsibility as a coaching staff to make sure we protect the program. And that has not always happened in the past.”

Here’s an interesting addition to the subject that our Barry Jackson made last week toward the end of one of his columns. And here’s his original column on the subject.

Diaz also talked about visiting high school games during the college season.

“Obviously, you’ve got a team and you’ve got a game and you have a lot of places that you want to be because obviously you’d love to see all of your recruits or all of your commits play,’’ he told Rose. “That’s all kind of the balancing aspect.

“You have to sort of balance it among your schedule and what you feel your obligation is to your team that is in the hotel that night. Location of game: Is there a game that you can get to and be able to make it back into the hotel. So those are sort of the balls that are in the air at one time.”

This story was originally published September 16, 2019 at 11:02 AM.