Manny Diaz took a proposal for the transfer portal to Andy & Ari On3, the college football show hosted by Andy Staples and Ari Wasserman, in an interview On3 circulated on Thursday. The Duke head coach wants schools to collect a payment when a player they recruited and developed leaves for another program, the way European soccer clubs are paid when a player moves.
“If you sign a bunch of great recruits and you develop them and they go somewhere else, I’ll go back to European soccer,” Diaz said. “You should receive a transfer fee.”
Quarterback Darian Mensah and wide receiver Cooper Barkate led Duke to the 2025 ACC championship and then left for Miami in January. Mensah had announced in December that he would return, changed course on the final day of the January portal window and was sued by Duke in Durham County Superior Court in an attempt to enforce his multiyear NIL contract.
The two sides settled, and both players committed to the Hurricanes. Mensah has completed 112 of 133 passes with 15 touchdowns for Miami this season.
Diaz sounded different in May, when he first discussed the exit with Staples. “My overriding emotion is gratitude, and I really mean that. I am thankful Darian Mensah came to Duke,” Diaz said then. Five months later, with the Miami game a month away, the gratitude has given way to a pitch for compensation.
Andy & Ari On3 had already explored the idea in an episode titled “Transfer fees in college football?” in the spring of 2025, before Duke had played a game with Mensah.
NEW: Duke head coach Manny Diaz tells @AndyAriOn3 that schools should receive a “transfer fee” when players portal:
“If you sign a bunch of great recruits and you develop them and they go somewhere else, I’ll go back to European soccer. You should receive a transfer fee.”
— On3 (@On3) October 15, 2026
What Diaz’s rule would have cost Duke in 2025
Mensah began his career at Tulane, which landed him as a four-star recruit in December 2022. He won the starting job as a redshirt freshman, started 13 games, led the Green Wave to the American Athletic Conference title game and committed to Duke in December 2024 as the top-rated player in ESPN’s portal rankings. Barkate arrived from Harvard for the 2025 season.
Tulane recruited Mensah, developed him into a starter and watched him leave for a bigger conference, the exact sequence Diaz described. Under a transfer-fee system, the quarterback who won Duke its ACC title would have arrived with a bill payable to New Orleans, and the receiver he leaned on most would have come with one payable to Harvard.
Duke’s 2025 roster included nine transfers, Mensah among them. Programs at Duke’s level buy and sell in the same market, so a fee system would send invoices in both directions, and the coach who loses a quarterback in January could be the one writing a check the following December.
Duke signed Mensah to a multiyear deal and went to court to hold him to it, and he still left. A set fee would attach a known price to a departure, which the contract and the lawsuit could not do on their own. That part of Diaz’s frustration is very easy to follow.
Diaz coached Miami from 2019 to 2021 before he was fired, and the Blue Devils, 4-1 after a narrow loss at Georgia Tech, visit Hard Rock Stadium on Nov. 14 for the first meeting with Mensah since his exit.
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