The college football world has been reacting to the coaching change at Penn State this week, including a number of head coaches around the country with some ties to Penn State. That includes a former James Franklin assistant who could be a candidate to be the next head coach of the Nittany Lions, Manny Diaz.
Diaz is currently the head coach at Duke, a position he took after a short stay at Penn State as a defensive coordinator. Diaz came to Penn State in 2022 to replace longtime Franklin assistant Brent Pry, who had accepted an offer to be the head coach at Virginia Tech. Diaz was a home run hire for Franklin and Penn State and he directed one of the nation’s top-ranked defensive units and was a 2023 semi-finalist for the Broyles Award.
Diaz also has head coaching experience at Miami, and now with Duke. Diaz guided Duke to a 9-4 record last season and is off to a 4-2 start this season. Naturally, his success in Durham and ties to the Penn State program have led many to believe he could be a candidate to fill the head coaching vacancy at Penn State.
During his meeting with the press on Monday, Diaz addressed the situation at Penn State and suggested this is just the nature of the game today in the College Football Playoff and NIL era.
“I’ve already been through it. Look, there’s three things you go through when you’re a coach,” Diaz said to reporters, according to On3. “You’re in the honeymoon phase, you’re in the please don’t leave phase, and you’re in the please leave now phase, right? And, what I just told you is it can change in three weeks. You have got to be present of where you are. And, the second you start thinking about what’s next, you’re about to get it.”
Diaz reflected on Franklin’s focus on trying to improve and win at Penn State and how quickly things unfolded that led to his ousting with the program. And if you ask Diaz, he thinks Franklin may have been harmed in part by the ongoing push for superconferences to change the schedule and make things more challenging for all coaches.
“The more you put people at the top and they’re going to play each other, someone is going to lose the game. It’s just going to happen…I just, I think we’re in a strange place in this sport. Because, if you can have a bad three weeks and it can go that quickly, it just lets everybody know we’re not where we used to be.”
It would be interesting to see if Pat Kraft considers Manny Diaz. The two have a very brief history together at Temple. When Kraft was the AD at Temple, he hired Diaz to be the next head coach of the Owls after Geoff Collins left to be the head coach at Georgia Tech in 2018. But Diaz never coached a game for the Owls as he accepted another offer to become the head coach at Miami two weeks after being introduced as Temple’s new head coach.
Follow Kevin McGuire on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
Follow Nittany Lions Wire on X, Facebook, and Threads.
This article originally appeared on Nittany Lions Wire: Duke’s Manny Diaz reacts to James Franklin news and candidacy for job
