Athletic director Blake James is out at Miami, two days after the Hurricanes’ football team lost at Florida State, a source told ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg.
The move comes about six weeks after school president Julio Frenk released a letter to the university community insisting he would increase his involvement with athletics and saying “we are fully committed to building championship-caliber teams at The U.”
Football — the biggest part of Miami’s athletic brand — has struggled again this season. Miami is 19-15 in coach Manny Diaz’s three seasons, including 5-5 this season. The Hurricanes wasted an eight-point lead in the final minutes of a 31-28 loss to Florida State on Saturday.
James was part of the decision-making group that hired Diaz in 2018, luring him away from a job at Temple that he’d held for less than a month. Diaz had been Miami’s defensive coordinator under Mark Richt, and when Richt resigned on Dec. 30, 2018, the Hurricanes needed only a few hours before completing a deal with Diaz.
James last month offered tepid support for third-year coach Manny Diaz, telling ESPN’s Andrea Adelson, “It’s too hard to look into the future. I don’t know what’s going to happen, again. I think everyone’s constantly being evaluated, and you make the decisions that you feel are best for the program.”
Sources told ESPN this weekend that if Miami were to fire Diaz, James would not have been the person hiring the next coach.
James accepted the Miami job in February 2013, with the Hurricanes still in the throes of the NCAA investigation into the actions of rogue former booster Nevin Shapiro. The Hurricanes got through scholarship limitations and probation that followed the Shapiro decision, and James helped the school complete a number of facilities projects — a baseball player development center, an indoor practice facility for football, a nutrition center and many more.
He’s also well-regarded nationally, serving as a past chair of the NCAA Division I Council.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.