New Miami coach Manny Diaz winning over fans, recruits with social media posts

Miami athletics director Blake James credits his new coach Manny Diaz for his innovative use of social media even if sometimes he doesn’t understand it.

Diaz’s use of eye-catching memes, funny GIFS and hashtags like #TNM — The New Miami — are used primarily to catch the attention of 18-to-20 year-old blue chip recruits, but the message has also resonated with Hurricanes fans, alumni and even the occasional UM board of trustee member.

“I think everyone recognizes he is a master with social media,” James said during ACC spring meetings. “I see him come up with something new and I’ll get donors or Board of Trustee members calling me going, ‘What does that mean? What’s Manny tweeting about? What is it?’ He’s just created a lot of excitement. He’s a great communicator.

“I’ll be honest, the first time I saw the #TNM, I had to quickly text my communications guy and ask, ‘What’s #TNM? That’s what he told me was The New Miami,'” James said with a chuckle. “I don’t always know.”

In a digital age where coaches are more willing to give up control of their Twitter or Facebook accounts to members of the communications department, the 45-year-old Diaz handles all of his own social media posts.

“People didn’t believe at first that it was me,” Diaz said of his posts on his Twitter account, @Coach_MannyDiaz, which has a little more than 57,000 followers. “I’m a consumer of it. So I follow it and follow different people among different platforms. It’s like anything else, if you’re a consumer of the product, you know what you like and then you have a chance to project those same things.

“It’s far more fun and innocent than super-well calculated. I try and use it as an avenue of fun. A lot of things I put out there because it entertains me and makes me laugh.”

But Diaz admits he uses mainly uses Twitter as a recruiting tool — a means of reaching out to high school recruits who might be interested in playing at Miami.

“Everything that goes out there, in my mind, is going out to recruits,” Diaz explained. “How are we seen in the world of seniors, juniors and sophomores in high school? You follow the world that they live in and see what they’re amused by and entertained by and then you try to play towards that.”

Something must be working because Miami holds the No. 4 spot in the latest rankings by 247Sports.com for the upcoming 2020 recruiting class.

NCAA rules prohibit coaches from directly tweeting at a recruit or retweeting anything from a recruit with a comment. Schools or coaches are now allowed to like a recruit’s post and can even retweet articles about prospects as long as they don’t comment.

Part of the process of impressing recruits without directly tagging them in Twitter posts includes keeping up with the latest trends as much as any Football Bowl Subdivision coach can with a limited amount of free time — especially during a busy football season.

“I remember when everybody went on Facebook to find the recruits and now they’re not on Facebook anymore. You have to be able to turn to Instagram and Snapchat and understand that world,” Diaz added. “Because that’s where they live, that’s where they’re at and it’s been one of the dramatic changes in recruiting.”

The wall of communication between coach and recruit has forever been changed, according to the first-year coach, just like it was with the disappearance of the long-distance call, free texts and now communication on social media platforms.

“The idea now that there are so many free ways to connect has produced a massive avenue for communication flow,” he added. “What the kids see now doesn’t even fit a generation ago.”

How the message is delivered is one thing, but Diaz warns it still has to have substance to back it up.

“You can’t build a program through social media,” Diaz said. “I’m much more concerned with what is happening inside the building but certainly if we can get what’s going on inside right and then reflect it positively on the outside, then that entertains everybody. We’re still in the entertainment business.”