You mentioned that the decision was made after Michigan St. I think if the season had ended at that point, you would be correct. Forgive me for being skeptical*, but I have a hard time believing that after 15 plus years of pathetic football and lack of support, if Diaz had ended the regular season on a 6 game win streak to finish 8-4, beat FSU for the 3rd straight year, snuck into the acc championship game (due to a Pitt and UVA loss), and beaten Wake Forest in the acc championship, that UM would have changed coaches. Id say the chances would be slim to none that UM would have fired Diaz after winning UMs first acc championship ever, despite what may have been said after Michigan St.
*I'm not doubting your word, I'm doubting Frenk would have had the balls to fire Diaz if he won the acc title.
Look, I'm not trying to argue with you or anything. But you are putting this all on the Ws and Ls, and there were some other things at play.
First, Manny had been OFFERED more resources on the coaching side. He chose not to use those resources. Manny rejected the hiring of Alonzo and he rejected the hiring of a DC. Let's not forget who was AVAILABLE 12 months prior to when he was offered and accepted the UM DC job...
Second, there was already a groundswell building to fire Beta Blake. So even in your "Manny wins out" hypothetical, you still have an AD that would have been replaced, and it is not uncommon that a new AD might lead to at least one new head coach.
Third, go back to every post from last year where someone asked the question "what will it take for Manny to save his job" and I repeatedly said "win out". And, yes, if Manny had gone 10-2 in the regular season, maybe there was a legitimate argument to be made for "let's see what happens next year". BUT. Manny didn't win out. We didn't get any new verbals for months. We looked like crap in several games, and the fan support was waning. AND, Mario had expressed interest. So no matter how much we try to hypothesize about whether "10 wins" would have "earned" Manny another shot, you also had a multiple Pac 12 championship coach and UM alum as a legitimate OPTION. So whatever you can say about "Manny just won 10 games", your OPTION is also capable of winning a P5 conference. And THEN when you factor in all the other things about funding, alum support, ticket sales, player discipline/penalties, recruiting, etc., you come to a pretty compelling conclusion that Mario is worth the leap, regardless of whether Manny wins 10 games.
What is Chris Rock's line, something like "you're only as faithful as your OPTIONS"? And Miami had a **** good option. So we have to look at both sides of the equation, not just the "but but but what if Manny wins 10 games?" side.