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New Texas defensive coordinator Manny Diaz, whose career started as a graduate assistant for Bobby Bowden's great Florida State teams of the late 1990s, says he's hungry for a chance to play for another national championship with the Longhorns.
Diaz was a graduate assistant for the Seminoles teams that played for a national title after the 1998 season and won one in 1999.
''I didn't get sick and tired playing in those national championship games,'' Diaz said Thursday. ''We want to lead the nation in wins (at Texas).''
He'll have his work cut out for him. After a 25-2 run over the 2008-2009 seasons, the Longhorns faltered badly in 2010, dropping to 5-7 in the program's first losing season since 1997.
And when defensive coordinator Will Muschamp left to take the head coaching job at Florida, Longhorns head coach Mack Brown plucked Diaz from Mississippi State for his rebuilding project, even though the 34-year-old had only one season of being a coordinator at a BCS school.
Brown said he talked to a lot of coaches across the country and Diaz's name kept coming up as a young, hungry, innovative coach.
''Everywhere I called, Manny Diaz's name came up,'' Brown said. ''He will be a great fit with the coaches we have on campus.''
Diaz, who once worked at ESPN and thought he wanted a career in sports journalism, was inspired to pursue coaching after helping cover a Bill Parcells news conference.
''From that moment, I didn't want to coach any more, I HAD to do it,'' Diaz said.
Diaz's career took him from Florida State to North Carolina State and Middle Tennessee. He was defensive coordinator at Middle Tennessee for four seasons before taking the same job at Mississippi State.
Diaz said he liked coaching the Bulldogs and didn't pursue the Texas job until he got a call from Brown on Monday night, starting the kind of week ''that will change your life.''
Even though it was Texas calling, Diaz said he still had to take a good look around, ''checking under the hood'' and ''kicking the tires'' to see if he really wanted to come to Austin.
''Overall, the feeling was I'd have to get my brain checked if I didn't come here,'' Diaz said. ''You can ask yourself 'Are you ready?', or you can say. 'You're ready because you were put here.'''
Diaz promised Texas would play an attacking style of defense with multiple formations.
''I want the offense to feel like we've got 13 or 14 guys running around the field,'' Diaz said. ''We're going to play like we're in a bad mood.''
Muschamp made $900,000 annually in a deal that would have promoted him to head coach if he was here when Brown eventually retires. Diaz told the AP on Wednesday night his contract does not include any ''coach-in-waiting'' promise like Muschamp's did.
Brown introduced Diaz at Thursday's news conference but did not take questions. He is still looking to hire an offensive coordinator and offensive line coach.
Brown, who earns $5 million a year, said he as spent several weeks evaluating the entire football program to figure out everything that went wrong in his first losing season as a head coach since 1989.
Shortly after the season ended, longtime offensive coordinator Greg Davis resigned and offensive line coach and defensive line coach Mac McWhorter retired. Wide receivers coach Bobby Kennedy also left for a similar job at Colorado.
''When you have a tough year like we did, you need to restart,'' Brown said. ''That was evident for all of us.''
