​CHARLOTTE — In the midst of an interview on Wednesday here at ACC football media days, Darian Mensah tugs at the collar of his green button-down shirt.He needs a bit of breathing room.After all, the Miami quarterback has been on a whirlwind the last few months. Just last year at this very event, he wore a gray suit and blue tie as a representative of the Duke Blue Devils. Now, here he is in an off-white suit jacket, textured tie and that green shirt.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAfter one of the most controversial and stunning transfers in the modern era of the sport — a last-minute, contract-breaking, intraconference, multi-million dollar, lawsuit-triggering move — he’s now the face of the Miami Hurricanes.And he really doesn’t care what you think of his decision to leave Durham for South Florida.“Why would I worry about it?” he asks.“Business is business,” he later told a group of reporters gathered around him here.The ACC kicked off its three-day football media days with a banger: its most talented team and reigning national championship runner-up, Miami, parading the league’s most visible player around the downtown Charlotte Hilton just six months after he left one conference member for another and was then sued by the latter.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementIt sounds incredibly spicy. But that’s one thing that Mensah is not. In an interview setting, he’s a bit bland and dry. That’s something he readily acknowledges. Two-sentence answers. Humble talking points. Polite and calm. Cerebral and unexpressive.“I probably won’t ever be the biggest fan of doing all this,” he said, tugging on that collar and gesturing across a bustling lobby of media members. “But gratitude is something I hold close. I know I have to be grateful for every moment or else. I know how fast stuff can be taken away from me.”Miami quarterback Darian Mensah speaks to the media during ACC media days. (Jim Dedmon/Reuters)(IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / REUTERS)Mensah’s meteoric rise is well documented: From an overlooked, under-recruited California kid raised by a single mother of four who at one point declared bankruptcy, to one of the top-paid players in this new compensation era of college football who’s on his third school in three years. He’s the shimmering example of talent and determination, but also ideal timing in this rudderless era of the sport, where free-spending programs are desperately seeking quarterback competence, even if it means promising upwards of $6 million annually to a college-aged kid.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementBut his move from Duke to Miami — he was asked a dozen times here why? —wasn’t about cash, his mother Naomi told Yahoo Sports on Wednesday by phone from Miami. Her son thought he’d have the best chance of accomplishing his goals — a national championship and Heisman Trophy — with the Hurricanes.Darian didn’t plan to leave. He’d already decided to bypass the