Duke’s Manny Diaz has to be one of the ACC’s most expressive coaches, hardly holding back or keeping things close to the vest. He’s opinionated. He speaks out.
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In a free-wheeling media session Friday at the ACC Football Kickoff, Diaz talked about Darian Mensah, NIL contracts, winning the 2025 ACC title, the NCAA’s proposed five-in-five eligibility rule, the ACC’s new tiebreaker rule, the current state of college sports and where things may stand, say, five years from now.
“When you launch a rocket into outer space and you’re still building it as you’re going through the atmosphere, that’s college football right now,” Diaz said, smiling. “It’s going to be a little bumpy.”
Much has been said and written about Mensah, the quarterback who led the Blue Devils to the ACC title last season, said he was returning for another year, then bolted — after a legal standoff — to Miami to play for the Hurricanes. He had a two-year NIL contract with Duke but breached it by leaving after one year, leading to a legal battle and a settlement.
Mensah, in an appearance Wednesday with the Hurricanes at the ACC Kickoff, said “business is business” as a factor in his decision to leave. Mensah, who transferred to Duke from Tulane, reportedly was paid $4 million last season and should make more in Miami.
Diaz has not said much about Mensah’s departure since the transfer, but did Friday.
“I think the team handled it well,” Diaz said. “I think our guys, there’s a closeness at Duke, that our guys believe that there’s ‘us and them,’ and they want guys who want to be ‘us.’
“It’s the grownups who always screw it up, not the kids, and what they’re being told. But it is what it is. You move on and solve the problems. That’s what sports is: solve the problems.”
Diaz was asked if he believed Miami was involved in tampering in getting Mensah.
“It’s an unanswerable question because ultimately what it came down to, and this is why it was never an issue for us, is you can only say what you can prove,” Diaz said. “So to me, it doesn’t matter.
“That’s why our issue was never with any other school. Duke was very consistent. The whole issue was simply about a contract that we felt had to be honored, And it wasn’t honored, and what’s the ramification of that? That’s what happened, and all parties were satisfied, and all parties moved on.”
Duke linebacker Luke Mergott said the decision by Mensah was disappointing — to a point.
“It’s definitely sad, but it’s not like there’s hate or resentment,” Mergott said Friday. “It is what it is. It’s the game right now. You’re going to lose people. That’s the game, so ..”
Which is another way of saying, business is business.
Diaz, left looking for a replacement quarterback in the portal, said there was no time to be sad or upset about the situation.
“Emotion doesn’t help solve it,” Diaz said. “To me, it was like what do we have to do and who’s available and how do we solve this right away? And to solve it as quickly as we did, I thought, was massive for us.”
The Blue Devils solved it by bringing in quarterback Walker Eget from San Jose State. Eget, who passed for 3,051 yards and 17 touchdowns last season, has been rehabbing a leg injury but should be ready for preseason practice in August, Diaz said Friday.
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“He’s highly intelligent in how he sees the game,” Diaz said. “It’s like having another coach on the field.
“We believe in what we do on offense. We believe in the quarterback running the offense. We’ve won nine games with very different quarterbacks the last two years. Both set school records. Whoever it is, we have to play to our strengths.”
The Blue Devils were 9-4 in 2024 with Maalik Murphy as QB, Diaz’s first season as coach after Mike Elko left for Texas A&M.
Duke, 9-5 last season, was 6-2 in the ACC and won the tiebreaker — on conference opponents’ win percentage — to take the second spot in the ACC championship game against Virginia.
And then won it. The Devils took a 27-20 overtime victory, one sealed on an interception by Mergott, at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. That gave the school its first outright football title since 1962.
The Blue Devils, despite being ACC champions, were not selected for the College Football Playoff. The ACC avoided being shut out of the playoffs completely when Miami was selected, advancing to the national championship game before a loss to Indiana.
With that in mind, the ACC has revamped its tiebreaker rule.
“It will come down to body of work,” commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday. “Who you play, when you play, the games you win, conference and non-conference, will matter.
“We talked a lot about it, used a lot of consultants, did 10,000 algorithms of different scenarios. It warranted that kind of time and commitment so that we can position ourselves to put those two best ACC teams forward. … I feel incredibly strong that we have gotten to the right place, with unanimity with our membership, on what this new tie-breaking policy states.”
Diaz said he did not like the unavoidable narrative that the two teams that reach this year’s title game will be “more deserving” of being in Charlotte — an obvious slight at what Duke accomplished last season.
“By every metric, we were 100 percent deserving of being here in Charlotte by the most objective metric ever, which is strength of schedule based off win and losses,” Diaz said. “To use nonconference games in determining it, that’s not the competition we’re in. We’re in a competition to determine, of the 17 teams, which is the best. We won that a year ago.
“We should have been in the playoff. Miami should have been in the playoff. In my mind, that should have been the story from a year ago, not how can we keep Duke out of the playoff. Our champ should always be in the playoff if this league is what we think it is.”
Diaz, like many coaches, has concerns about the future of college football. Costs are rising. Rules are changing. Lawsuits are many.
“That’s what wrecking our game right now, finding one judge who will agree with whatever you want him to agree with,” Diaz said.
Diaz sees the current college sports system as “unsustainable,” but is unsure on what’s next.
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“That’s the million-dollar question, right?” he said.