UM Canes stage protest. Manny Diaz is ‘proud to be part of a staff of men who are real’
The images were powerful.
University of Miami football players, other athletes, their coaches and school president Julio Frenk were shown on social media kneeling for 8 minutes 46 seconds Tuesday night — designated #BlackoutTuesday — to honor George Floyd, who died last week when a police officer in Minneapolis knelt on his neck for that long.
Miami football coach Manny Diaz told the Miami Herald in a one-on-one phone interview that he was especially proud of his coaching staff being vocal early and often, including on social media, about the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I’m proud to be a part of a staff of men who are real and aren’t afraid to express their opinion where it’s needed,’’ Diaz told the Herald. “I think we have a great opportunity at the University of Miami to be a voice and to help make things better. I think we’ve all seen that. We’ve seen that in this city, in our past, where we’ve come and I’m very proud of this city this weekend and the way that the vast, vast, vast majority of people who did protest did so in a peaceful manner.
“There’s real strength to that. We don’t talk about that enough. Everybody wants to talk about a fringe person here and there who wanted to cause trouble. How many people really came out to have their voices heard and did it the right way? That’s phenomenal, and I was beaming with pride to be a part of this community.”
UM athletic director Blake James went on WQAM radio on Wednesday morning to give UM football updates, including his ‘gut’ feeling that there probably won’t be fans at the Sept. 5 opener, and also spoke about the George Floyd issue and how UM has reacted.
“It’s been tough times in our country and around the world over the last probably 10 days to two weeks now,’’ James told WQAM, “and to have the opportunity for our student-athletes to come together and show their frustration, their support, their call for change, was something [positive].
“I talked with Manny [Diaz], with [women’s basketball coach] Katie Meier [and] the rest of our coaches and we just had a great turnout from our students. It just shows the great young people we have in our program and their desire to take on challenges and change our world for a better place.”
Diaz, whose team is mostly made up of black student-athletes, was asked why he feels it’s important to be vocal about Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I think there’s an expectation [of that] when you’re in a leadership position,’’ the coach said. “One thing that leaders should do is, if there is a problem, they see it and they want to look for a solution and if it’s a community problem, then it affects all of us.
“This is not a sports issue and I’ve said to you and to everybody for a long time that the relationship between the community of Miami and the Miami Hurricanes, that’s a close relationship and you can’t separate the two. With our team and our staff, we just feel that there’s an expectation to have a voice because it can’t be OK and we just can’t go on living like everything’s OK. You’ve heard me talk about it a lot of times: You identify the problem. It’s not about passing on blame. We look to answers and we look to try and solve it.”
Although he did post at least one photo on social media of the Floyd-related protests that took place in Miami and Coral Gables this past weekend, Diaz said he did not attend any weekend protest.
In addition to UM’s own #BlackoutTuesday event, held in the Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility (which was open only for the special event and had participants social distanced and wearing masks because of the coronavirus pandemic), the Canes met with Coral Gables police chief Ed Hudak by Zoom videoconferencing on Friday.
Asked to elaborate on the Zoom meeting with Hudak, which included the whole team, Diaz said that it was “difficult in a Zoom setting when you have so many people,’’ but that the players broke out in small groups afterward and “had a chance to express themselves.’’
Diaz said Hudak’s words signified accountability on the part of police everywhere. He also gave practical advice to the players.
“Chief Hudak did a fantastic job,’’ Diaz told the Herald. “Right now there is a struggle with accountability. We want to dodge, we don’t want to listen to each other, we want to play what-about-ism and I think for Chief Hudak to stand there — I thought he was a voice that our players are not hearing and most people are not hearing out there right now because more often than not it’s a message that doesn’t solve anything.
“It for sure doesn’t take any hurt away, but it at least helped give a perspective that I felt like the players weren’t hearing.”
Diaz conceded that he “could never speak for the emotional state of my players, but I would imagine that they’re not OK” in regard to race relations in our country.
Did he suggest or even tell them not to protest last weekend?
“We did not make any suggestions for Saturday,’’ Diaz said. “We had some concerns over some of the intel of some fringe groups that may be causing trouble and we gave them a proper warning about that. We never said definitively ‘Don’t do anything.’ And I think our players have been fantastic.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 11:07 AM.
