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What good college football programs are doing to elevate to elite status
Like Clemson over the past decade, Michigan State, Oklahoma State, Miami and Texas A&M are all taking the steps to go from good to the upper echelon of college football.
www.espn.com
some snippets
Miami's quest to move up a tier is fascinating because of what the program was not so long ago. The Hurricanes reached the sport's pinnacle somewhat recently, winning a national title in 2001, competing for another in 2002 and recording a fourth straight AP top-five finish in 2003. Miami also was the nation's preeminent program for much of the 1980s and early 1990s, collecting four national titles and eight top-three finishes.
But the past 19 seasons have brought zero conference titles and only one division championship to the U. The program cycled through coaches but never made the investments needed to keep pace with a shifting college football landscape. That all changed late last fall, as Miami pursued and ultimately plucked coach Mario Cristobal from Oregon and athletic director Dan Radakovich from Clemson.
Cristobal's Miami roots run deep -- he won two national championships as a Hurricanes offensive lineman and worked as an assistant coach from 2004 to 2006. Radakovich began his administrative career at Miami in the 1980s. But without Miami's newfound commitment to upgrade facilities and other areas of the program, Cristobal and Radakovich wouldn't have left great situations for Coral Gables.
"If you don't have campus backing and buy-in today, I don't know how a lot of schools can survive," Radakovich told ESPN. "We've talked about how many schools are really tubs on their own bottom, that financially do this stuff on their own, and there are just not many. I was really focused on what their plans were for the future, how they were going to get there, how they were going to expand the resources for the program."
Miami is delivering on its promises, as ESPN's Andrea Adelson wrote last month. Cristobal assembled a strong staff and facilities plans are coming together. As soon as NIL went into effect last July, Miami became a major player in the space.
When it came to football, the school might not have had an alignment problem as much as an indifference problem. But everything changed last fall. The pursuit of Cristobal wasn't the cleanest process -- former coach Manny Diaz was left hanging for several days until Cristobal agreed to take the job -- but Miami's boldness, a defining trait during the program's heyday, paid off.
"One of our board members who played an integral role in this says, 'We're not spending money, we're investing money, and we expect a return over time,'" Rudy Fernandez, Miami's executive vice president for external affairs and strategic initiatives and chief of staff, told Adelson. "It's not a Year 1 return on the financial standpoint, but we expect a return, and that will be increased revenue, and the brand lift and marketing lift that comes from being successful in college football."
Cristobal is at the center of Miami's push to move up, but Radakovich also occupies a key role. He took over at Clemson in 2012, and saw the program's rise to annual championship contender. While he did not hire Swinney, he spearheaded infrastructure elements for the program, including a $55 million football operations building and other facilities upgrades.
"Your facilities show that an institution has made an investment and that this sport is important and football will be important here at the University of Miami," Radakovich said. "It's easy to say that, and there's banners and pictures and trophies here and there, but when a prospect and their parents come here and they see the facility and what the campus has pulled together for this particular sport, it makes a huge impression.
"That's the next thing we need to do."
Radakovich pointed out that every school has its own realities and challenges, but his experience in seeing Clemson become a top-tier program can inform what Miami does next. Clemson sunk money into football like it never had before, but so have other programs.
The difference, according to Radakovich, was the alignment between Swinney, the athletic department and the university administration and board, which allowed the program to not only elevate but sustain.
"There have been a lot of schools over the last couple of decades that have spent a ton of money and haven't really gotten results that maybe they would have thought they should get," Radakovich said. "You need to have a little bit of patience, keep the task primary, keep that alignment together. Those three things, along with the investment, are going to help you move forward."