Pitt's Pat Narduzzi sounds the alarm on Miami’s aggressive portal tactics after the Hurricanes allegedly lured Duke’s star quarterback away despite a multimillion-dollar contract.
The timeline of Duke transfers Darian Mensah and Cooper Barkate signing with the Miami Hurricanes seemed a little bit funny this offseason.
The quarterback and wide receiver tandem helped lead Duke to the ACC championship in 2025, and both decided to leave for Miami right before the transfer portal ended.
The Hurricanes apparently had another quarterback on their mind with Mensah under a two-year, $8 million contract with the Blue Devils.
During the ACC Kickoff media event on Friday, Pitt head coach Pat Narduzzi told The Athletic that the Hurricanes tried to entice Panthers quarterback Mason Heintschel to transfer to Miami the day before the portal closed, but Narduzzi was able to keep his signal-caller from leaving.
Also better known as tampering.
Narduzzi then gave Duke head coach Manny Diaz a heads up that Miami could go after Mensah next, as the Hurricanes were working on "multiple quarterbacks."
“Shoot, I talked to Manny that Thursday afternoon and said, ‘Hey, watch out. I hear he’s going for your guy next.’ And sure enough, they stole him,” Narduzzi told The Athletic.
On Friday, Diaz told reporters that he couldn't prove Miami was tampering, which is why Duke focused on making sure they focused on the breach of contract by Mensah, who was under contract to play for Duke in 2026.
“It’s an unanswerable question because ultimately it came down to, and this is why it was never an issue for us, is because you can only say what you can prove, right?" Diaz said, via Pat Welter of WRAL. "So to me it doesn't matter if it's not, and that's why our issue was never with any other school, right?
"The school was… very consistent. The whole situation was simply about a contract that we just felt like had to be, you know, honored. And if it wasn't honored, then you know what is the ramification of that? That's exactly what happened. All parties were satisfied, and all parties moved on."
In the end, Miami got Duke's quarterback, and Diaz and his staff will have to suffer the consequences, even though they figured out their contract situation with Mensah.
Should the NCAA investigate Miami for tampering? Absolutely. But many more teams than Miami were doing the same thing this offseason, and there's nothing that really can be done about the past at this point.
New rules must be implemented to fix a problem that is causing issues for the integrity of college football.
