When Miami takes the field against Texas A&M on Saturday at Kyle Field, the Hurricanes will play a College Football Playoff game for the first time as a program.
At a program that’s captured 5 national championships, that storyline alone is almost as difficult to comprehend as parking on South Beach during Art Basel.
After all, this is Miami.
The U invented college football in the 1980s. Just ask them.
To wait this long to between opportunities to compete for championships is unfathomable.
Ask Mario Cristobal.
He won a national title at Miami as a player and was just 33 when Miami left the Big East for the ACC.
Back then, the Hurricanes were, well, a force of nature.
The U was just a little over 30 months from fielding arguably the best team in college football history in 2001, a 12-0 national champion led by future NFL All-Pros Sean Taylor, Ed Reed, Jeremy Shockey, Vince Wilfork, and Andre Johnson. The Hurricanes were only 18 months removed from being denied the program’s sixth national championship by a pass interference call that old men sipping cafecitos in Coconut Grove still discuss as evidence of college football corruption.
By leaving the Big East for the more revenue rich ACC, Miami figured to stake a claim as a national power well into the 21st century. Cristobal, then coaching the offensive line at Rutgers, decided he wanted to be a part of it. He accepted a job on Larry Coker’s staff, recruited like his hair was on fire, and readied for a championship rise in the coaching profession.
Except there were no more championships.
Miami still hasn’t won the ACC championship, an achievement most Canes fans figured would be a given when they joined the conference in 2003 (beginning play in 2004).
“It was invaluable experience,” Cristobal recalled of the time under Coker to SDS earlier this fall. “It also didn’t work out the way we all thought it would. Life doesn’t always go as planned.”
While Miami’s program languished in mediocrity and disappointment, Cristobal’s career took off away from his alma mater.
Cristobal left Miami for crosstown Florida International’s head coaching job in 2006, winning a Sun Belt title in 2010. Cristobal was later the associate head coach at Alabama under Nick Saban, winning a national title in 2015 as Saban’s ace recruiter and assistant, before leaving shortly thereafter for Oregon, where he won 2 Pac-12 titles as head coach in 2019 and 2020.
Cristobal had recruiting rolling, an administrative commitment to winning unparalleled in Oregon football’s storied history, and established status as the leader of one of the nation’s best programs. Future opportunities to play for championships in Eugene felt certain.
And then Mama called him home in December 2021.
Now, just 4 years after signing a 10-year contract worth $80 million, Cristobal has the Hurricanes back where they feel they belong: competing for championships on the national stage.
It hasn’t been a straight road getting here.
The Canes went 12-13 in Cristobal’s first 2 seasons, underachieving even compared to the man Cristobal replaced, Manny Diaz, another hometown Miami hero who is now the head coach at Duke and ironically, the ACC champion.
But Cristobal recruited at a high level and wielded Miami’s rich NIL resources masterfully in the transfer portal, bringing in 5-star talent on the offensive and defensive lines and striking gold at quarterback with Cam Ward, last year’s top pick in the NFL Draft, and the consummate winner Carson Beck, who left Georgia for the South Florida sunshine last winter.
The result has been 20 wins in Miami’s last 25 games and a surprising Playoff berth on Selection Sunday nearly 2 weeks ago.
In many ways, last year’s Miami team, which narrowly missed the Playoff after 2 late season losses, was better than this one. The Canes ranked first nationally in total offense a season ago and had a higher SP+ efficiency rating (7th) than this team, which ranks 27th and 9th in those metrics, respectively.
But football is a results-oriented game, and this year’s Miami team picked up the signature win last year’s team lacked in September, when it held off Notre Dame 27-24 on the season’s first weekend to capture Cristobal’s first top-10 win in Coral Gables. That proved to be the difference to the Playoff Committee.
“Notre Dame is a great football team,” Cristobal told the media of Miami’s selection over the Fighting Irish. “Last year we were excluded and we weren’t very happy. It’s a tough business, man. It’s a really, really tough business.”
Winning a game in the Playoff will be an even tougher business.
The Hurricanes saved their best football for last this year, walloping a ranked Pitt team on the road on November 29.
That game, however, will be 3 weeks ago come Saturday night, and Miami’s not played in a venue remotely as loud and hostile as Kyle Field, where 100,000 strong will be roaring behind the Aggies on every snap.
The intangibles favor the Aggies.
The matchup?
That’s a different story.
Miami features one of the nation’s best offensive lines, loaded with blue-chip NFL talent, especially at tackle. That should afford Miami the opportunity to offset Texas A&M’s best defensive asset—a fierce pass rush that ranked 2nd in the country in quarterback pressures and first in the nation in quarterback sacks.
Carson Beck and UM are also rated better than any passing offense Texas A&M has faced this year, including Texas.
And while the Aggies are 11-1, not all 11-win teams are created equal. Texas A&M did not play a single game against the SEC’s other 4 playoff programs (Georgia, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Ole Miss). The Canes will mark a significant step up in competition for Texas A&M, as well.
If Miami survives, the football gods have offered Miami a chance at Ohio State. You don’t need to be a tarot card reader in Wynwood to read the tea leaves of intrigue that matchup would offer. Twenty-three years after a heavy underdog Ohio State squad denied Miami a sixth national title in a stunning upset, a path to the College Football Playoff semifinals — and Ohio State’s road to back-to-back titles of its own — could involve a role reversal.
First things first, of course.
A dangerous, talented Texas A&M, playing in one of the sport’s best environments.
The kind of grand stage that explains why Miami brought Cristobal home.
The measuring stick that will tell us if finally, once and for all, the U is back.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
