Manny Diaz opens up on how Duke balances NIL, maintaining team chemistry

Duke Blue Devils head coach Manny Diaz has coached in the ACC both before and after NIL and revenue sharing have been allowed in college sports. Now, with some experience in the post-NIL world, he’s feeling more confident in how to balance that while maintaining team chemistry.

At the 2025 ACC Football Kickoff, Diaz dismissed the idea that paying players has to hurt chemistry. Instead, he believes that if the coach builds good relationships and the focus isn’t just on a transactional relationship, then teams can still succeed.

“They’re not mutually exclusive, right? The revenue sharing era is here,” Manny Diaz said. “The guys are getting what they’ve been long overdue. Their just reward. So, you can have that. You just have to set aside how are we going to have this culture, which, by the way, it’s not like you have to invent this.”

A major concern levied about NIL and revenue sharing has been how compensation is going to potentially negatively affect team chemistry. However, Manny Diaz was less worried about all of this. After all, it’s a problem every business in the country hypothetically deals with.

“That’s the same way that any organization that anybody in this room works [for], there’s a way that people are compensated for their work. So, I don’t know why it would be any different. You want to create a culture where people who do the best work are compensated the best way,” Diaz said. “And the people who have the greatest value are rewarded in the proper way. So, like I said, it’s new to college football. It’s not new to capitalism and economics.”

Duke landed the 34th-ranked recruiting class in the 2025 cycle. That was good for sixth among ACC schools for that recruiting cycle. In the Transfer Portal, Duke has the 25th-ranked class in the 2025 cycle. It’s a class with just 13 players leaving the program ahead of Diaz’s second season. That’s a result of the relationships that Diaz continues to emphasize.

“I think it’s still a relationship business,” Diaz said. “And I think the players are still watching to see who you are and how you treat them. If it’s simply just services rendered and services returned, I think at some point that’s gonna crack under the pressure of the season, and you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to look at some teams around the country the last couple of years who had high expectations at media days like this and ended up not being what everybody thought they were. That’s probably something — dust for fingerprints in that area.”

Manny Diaz first came to Duke in 2024. It was his second opportunity to be an ACC head coach after previously leading Miami from 2019 to 2021. He’d hit the ground running with the Blue Devils, going 9-4 overall and playing in the Gator Bowl. They’d finish the season tied for fourth in the ACC.

The 2025 season is going to kickoff for Duke with a game against FCS Elon on August 28th. A few weeks later, on September 20th, the Blue Devils begin ACC play against NC State.