STATE OF THE U: HARD TRUTH

[jjdds]

The only way Mario can save his career is if he hits on one of the QBs on the roster in 2025. QB shows glimpses of greatness and WRs will flock to Miami in 2026.

Your truth not the real truth. Another motion I can ignore

 

[CT Cane 44]

Harbaugh I’ll give you.

Chip Kelly made Oregon an 11-win program in 2 years
Dabo made the ACCCG in his third year

If Mario had the 5 year start Dabo had the same morons over analyzing Mario would be crying for Dabo to have been fired. Big year for Mario though.

 

[canesbrah]

How many times are we going to hear this narrative throughout multiple coaching regimes?

Mario inherited a crap roster from Diaz. Diaz inherited a crap roster from Richt. Richt inherited a crap roster from Golden. Golden inherited a crap roster from Shannon. Shannon inherited a crap roster from Coker. It's the same excuse for the last 20 years. MC is making $8M/year and getting money for recruiting/NIL. If a coach needs a team full of "his guys" to beat teams like Ga Tech, MTSU, etc, then they aren't a good coach.

It’s year 4 that’s chit don’t matter anymore

 

[Gsugradcanefan]

So you are seriously arguing the roster three years ago was really good?

The roster was enough to beat MTSU and you are being dishonest if you even attempt to argue otherwise. My point is that this excuse needs to be retired. Plenty of good coaches see a significant jump in year 2. Mario went from 5-7 to 7-5, slight improvement, but still got his lunch eaten by competent coaches. The team this year is likely 8-4 or 7-5 w/o Ward. Folks gotta keep making excuses for the highest paid/most resources available coach in the history of Miami. Besides, outside of Ward, a fair amount of the highly contributing players were Manny recruits. They can't all be bad.

 

[Fox305]

Cmon guys… to build an elite roster, it takes 5-6 years. We’ll contend then. Harbaugh took that long at Michigan.

We got lucky with Cam. We’re better than we were supposed to. But our defense still had a lot of holes and it showed.

Whether he’ll be good enough to with the Natty? Not sure, but he can get us in consistent top 10… let our roster catch up to your expectations

That’s not true at all.

It’s slurping. Indiana, SMU, & Arizona state all have built juggernauts in less time and with less resources than Mario/Miami.

It’s the NIL era. There is no point in me addressing this with an essay. Reality is, it takes about 2-3 years to see what you got with the current state of football. VERY RARE moving forward someone builds anything elite beyond year 4 because the system doesn’t allow or facilitate players needing to wait that long.

Problem is Miami gave Mario so much and he basically is doing what others before him have done.

As we see already with the portal, players already have stated the lack of QB is noteworthy moving forward here. The nickel kid could be something. But hard to see a true freshman, unless they show themselves to be a generational player and future top 10 pick, leading a team anywhere deep with the roster we are slated to have next year. It’s a bad formula.

 

[ALLoverCANE]

Bad Harbaugh almost got fired…tried to bolt for the nfl, couldn’t land the job he wanted and took a pay cut to stay.

He only had 1 bad season at Michigan and it was during COVID.

Harbaugh inherited a far less successful program than Mario and took it to higher heights faster than Mario did. That's just a fact.

We'll see what happens from here.

 

[Scorpioncane]

Exactly Mario is not an X and O's type of coach. Without Cam and fixer Ruiz who would sign up for a hypeman. I love the U but we need to get out of homers for coaching. Jimmy Johnson was from Texas, Erickson and Davis wasn't alumni. Let's get into the future.

Diaz and golden weren't alumni same results! (No acc title or much winning) Not sure what your point is?

 

[Scorpioncane]

That’s not true at all.

It’s slurping. Indiana, SMU, & Arizona state all have built juggernauts in less time and with less resources than Mario/Miami.

It’s the NIL era. There is no point in me addressing this with an essay. Reality is, it takes about 2-3 years to see what you got with the current state of football. VERY RARE moving forward someone builds anything elite beyond year 4 because the system doesn’t allow or facilitate players needing to wait that long.

Problem is Miami gave Mario so much and he basically is doing what others before him have done.

As we see already with the portal, players already have stated the lack of QB is noteworthy moving forward here. The nickel kid could be something. But hard to see a true freshman, unless they show themselves to be a generational player and future top 10 pick, leading a team anywhere deep with the roster we are slated to have next year. It’s a bad formula.

Asu, Indiana, and smu juggernauts?..lol 2 of 3 are out the playoffs schedules got them in and ASU is about to get there teeth kicked in!....big 12 champs say that with a str8 face...Mario needs to get his act together no doubt

 

[ssvir]

That’s not true at all.

It’s slurping. Indiana, SMU, & Arizona state all have built juggernauts in less time and with less resources than Mario/Miami.

It’s the NIL era. There is no point in me addressing this with an essay. Reality is, it takes about 2-3 years to see what you got with the current state of football. VERY RARE moving forward someone builds anything elite beyond year 4 because the system doesn’t allow or facilitate players needing to wait that long.

Problem is Miami gave Mario so much and he basically is doing what others before him have done.

As we see already with the portal, players already have stated the lack of QB is noteworthy moving forward here. The nickel kid could be something. But hard to see a true freshman, unless they show themselves to be a generational player and future top 10 pick, leading a team anywhere deep with the roster we are slated to have next year. It’s a bad formula.

 

[nickster]

It honestly isn’t.

Reality is nothing is a sure thing with the current system. I basically see this season being our best in the foreseeable future with YOUR SLURP DADDY as coach.

I’ll be sure to come back to this comment next year and the year after and we’ll see.

Reality is, is that I’m basically summarizing Mario projection based on what we’ve seen.

To make it easy for you it’s like:

2024 was LIKELY peak. Whatever that final record is (10-3/11-2)

2025: We may win 8 games. We probably win less. You can book mark it barring an unforeseen portal addition at QB. If we have Emory as our starting QB, Miami likely finished around .500 which is the standard for Mario here with this year being the outlier.

2026: He’ll then be on the hot seat and LIKELY respond with a better record that potentially equals or gets close to this year. But he likely, like every other time in his career falls short.

I could go deeper but nobody has time for an essay nor is it important enough. Just understand it’s going to be almost impossible to replicate this season with Mario unless he has an elite QB each season.

Fox305 with some enlightening predictions for the Mario slurpers. I think he is right on.

 

[Hurricane23]

Miami will never have this chance again blah blah blah, Miami will most definitely have a chance to compete for another title…

 

[Reyrey]

 

[DireWolf83]

I’ll preface this by stating, I LOVE MARIO as a message deliver.

I believe he is a leader of men. He can command the presence of guys and get them to commit to a cause. It’s a great trait to possess.

What he isn’t is a great coach. No example in his past showed this. Our fans ignored this for specific reasons. But the truth is his BEST route to winning as a HC was to accumulate the necessary star QB and have that player elevate the program and win and once that’s completed, other elite guys follow because Mario message would have been cashed with a fat deposit. Basically think Clemson/Dabo/DeShaun Watson. Watson elevated Clemson to title heights they still somewhat have. Dabo is a GM coach. Can’t call plays. Same as Mario.

I always believe that when the HC can’t call it, you are at a decide disadvantage all things equal. But you can succeed and navigate with the RIGHT players/formula. We had it with Cam Ward.

We completely blew our chance. This chance LIKELY doesn’t happen again. The QB that’s needed to ascend Miami doesn’t exist because we had him and still missed the ACC title game. It’s the ultimate shot to the chest.

The reality is this is the norm for Cristobal and UM. We chose to ignore it because we got “one of ours.”

He’d be a great GM. Mario has the capacity to BUILD a title roster, but he’ll NEVER be able to coach it to one.

9-0 and we completely go haywire and lose in typical modern UM fashion. Will finish 10-3 and lose Ward and all our historic offfensive players in one offseason.

There is little to no chance this team scratches 10 wins next year. Slightly tougher schedule with teams who will be itching to get even and send us the direction of FSU this year. It probably doesn’t happen, but I expect UM to be anywhere from 5-7 to 8-4. Neither will be good enough for the fans.

NIL somewhat takes away Mario greatest strength in that guys now can simply just not follow a “message” but rather a bag/depth chart. Therefore, a message built on building a culture BETTER come with results. We basically are an exciting 8th seed in the nfl. Just missed playoffs. No real message can be sold with that because we plateau at the end.

I think Mario next three years will go something like this:

2024: historic season but comes up small. Finished 10-3 and around #20. Draft/graduation Losses will be major on both sides.

2025: come in ranked 20–25th. Will almost assuredly get beat by ND week 1 by ALOT. (Double digit loss). I see a disappointing season (see win spectrum up top and honest questions will emerge in one year).

2026: Hot seat will exist. Mario will bounce back and likely secure another great roster after the stain of this season fades. I see us likely being right back where we are. 9-0/10-1 racing against probably a FSU/Clemson who will be hoping to leave the ACC at this point and we’ll have a chance to take the acc crown in the “final year” of the conference with all of us.

I expect, just like this year, just like Oregon, a similar stretch. Maybe we win ACC and make playoff. But not likely. I see a repeat season of 10-3/11-3 and a 1st round playoff loss or acc title loss that keeps us out.

At that point Miami will have to make a decision about him. I believe this is where we are as a program. Despite our history, we can’t seem to shake this spell we are under. I always felt we needed a savior QB to rise above it all. We had it this year and literally 9 pts in two games still stopped us.

I don’t know if we ever return. If Pat Mahomes was placed on UM, maybe we could make it to the promise land. Right now, despite this great season, it’s really one of the more DARKER times in recent memory. Nowhere to go. You couldn’t win with THIS SENIOR CLASS, who you gonna win with? Honest recruits deep down are asking.

Maybe Miami best route to be purged is to leave the ACC. Maybe the era of our return happens elsewhere. I doubt the Big10 ever lets us in. I see Big12 eventually in our future.

Regardless, I don’t believe the best years in UM future is with Mario and this season will hurt for a long time.

A ND fan just sent me this.

You're an embarassment for posting this.

Mario gave us a stellar improvement and has a bunch of dudes playing in this bowl game that came here for one and done years. In spite of fans like yourself.

We cheer for the same team but are built completely different.

Season isn't even over, ******.

 

[Fox305]

A ND fan just sent me this.

You're an embarassment for posting this.

Mario gave us a stellar improvement and has a bunch of dudes playing in this bowl game that came here for one and done years. In spite of fans like yourself.

We cheer for the same team but are built completely different.

Season isn't even over, ******.

Are you slow?

 

[Fox305]

Totally agree.

I got a question for Fox...
What the **** are you doing in watching Cane football if we are perennial losers?..

Buy yourself a set of decent clubs and go play.............leave Cane fans to say "Go Canes"....
You should say "Left the Canes and took up golf"........it's easier on your psyche.....seriously...

I’m an alum. Not only an alum. First gen grad at that. A little deeper: I’m a a HS dropout too. Meaning: UM was the first educational “home” I had. It’s personal. I say what I please because I want the U to return.

 

[Fox305]

Give the guy a break. He is what most Miami fans are right now....scared. We like Mario. He is a cane, he loves the program, he came back to Miami to win big. We want him to succeed. But if we are all being truly honest with ourselves, Mario's tenure here has left much to be desired. Coupled with the fact that you are going to lose crucial parts of an all world offense and a generational talent like Cam Ward and have nothing to show for it is beyond concerning. His post shows the classic conflict of leading with the heart and thinking with the head. This program has broken my heart too many times, all I have left is my head.

Perfect summation. I could have been more direct and simply said I don’t expect us in the playoff the next three seasons. But I don’t want that.

My head said it’s VERY likely. But my heart won’t allow me to do it because the U.

 

[Fox305]

I understand your perspective, but I have to disagree with some of the conclusions. While I get the frustration of being so close to success and falling short, I think it’s important to be realistic about where the program is right now. This season was never going to be a championship year, it was always about laying the foundation for sustained success. For Miami to truly return to greatness, it’s not just about one magical season. Programs don’t jump straight to titles without stacking multiple 10- or 11-win seasons first. That’s how you build momentum and a winning culture.

Look at Georgia, they’re the perfect example. For years, they were stuck in the same 2-3 loss cycle before finally breaking through and winning three titles. They built their program step by step, stacking strong seasons and developing depth.Consistency leads to greatness.

Oregon is another great example. Over the past few years, they’ve had 2-3 losses consistently, and now they’re finally undefeated and a legitimate title contender. That progression takes time. As much as it stings, Miami has to go through those same steps.

I get it, we could almost taste success this year. It was right there in front of us, and losing the way we did is tough to swallow. But I don’t think it’s fair to say this team has “no chance” without Cam Ward or that we missed our one shot. Great teams are built on consistency, not just one player. You don’t need a generational QB every year to win championships. You need depth, development, and a clear identity.

Yes, Mario has his flaws as an in-game coach, but his ability to build a roster is undeniable. If Miami stays the course and keeps stacking talent, especially in the trenches, this program can get back to where it belongs. NIL has changed the game, but it doesn’t erase the importance of culture and a winning message. Results do matter, and this year’s step forward is part of the process, even if it’s painful.

I don’t see this as one of the “darker times” for Miami, it’s the opposite. For the first time in years, we’re building something real. It’s not going to happen overnight, but there’s no reason to believe we can’t be in the playoff conversation in a year or two with the right pieces. Georgia, Oregon, and others showed it can be done, we just have to stay the course and let the process play out. Leaving the ACC or joining another conference might help financially, but the on-field results come from stacking seasons like this one. The future isn’t as bleak as it seems, it’s just a matter of staying patient and continuing to build.

Respect but this isn’t true at all. Particularly in the NIL era.

Kirby smart coming off Richt going 7-5, basically came in and had two rebuild years before going the title game and losing on a last second bomb. So basically year 3 (we are beyond that now), UGA took off and that was it.

Oregon immediately is a red flag for us. They lose Mario and with a new scheme/system, they immediately become a power. Lanning has them winning with a Kibry/Saban-esque formula and it pays dividends.

Mario can’t call plays. He never coached a title team as a OC/DC. Reality is, only ONE modern coach had that resume and won and it’s Dabo. And Dabo with his generational QB took down a bama team poised for 2-3 titles in a row. We had a guy similar and lost to a 5th/3rd place ACC group of teams. It’s not equal.

Reality is losing foundational pieces that led to this teams outcome. And as of today, they haven’t and don’t seem to be replaced. Not only that, the coordinator who unit was directly repsonsibkd is still somehow employed. Recruiting shouldn’t hedge on such an individual so a serious title team likely would have already cut bait with him. Fact he still around speaks volumes. Buck stops with HC anyway though.

I think this season is NEAR/Likely our peak with Mario. Maybe we make a ACC title game in 2/3 years. Maybe we make a quarterfinal playoff game. With a guy like Mario, history shows you won’t get much more than that.

 

[Fox305]

I think this season will hurt for a long time and I think that Mario is lacking in a lot of areas and he may not ultimately be the guy but this doom and gloom take is utter bull****

The main issue for the last 20 years, was not only not hiring the right coaches, but it was also having complete lack of institutional investment and support and buying all the way up and down the chain

That is no longer the case everyone empower now has learned their lesson or just as always had the belief. What they will probably do if it comes down to. It is be a little bit too slow on firing Mario because he was their guy and is part of some of their history, but ultimately they’re not going to abandon everything after being called out nationally on TV like we know and then investing, and then getting a complete change at the top.

******* hate posts like this. You can be totally realistic and tell what’s happening without going into the ******* world is over bull****.

I think this season will hurt for a long time and I think that Mario is lacking in a lot of areas and he may not ultimately be the guy but this doom and gloom take is utter bull****

The main issue for the last 20 years, was not only not hiring the right coaches, but it was also having complete lack of institutional investment and support and buying all the way up and down the chain

That is no longer the case everyone empower now has learned their lesson or just as always had the belief. What they will probably do if it comes down to. It is be a little bit too slow on firing Mario because he was their guy and is part of some of their history, but ultimately they’re not going to abandon everything after being called out nationally on TV like we know and then investing, and then getting a complete change at the top.

******* hate posts like this. You can be totally realistic and tell what’s happening without going into the ******* world is over bull****.

Reality is your own words are agreeing with the posts but you made how the message was written.

Apologies, but I’d rather just keep it real.

I love history. I think it never should be ignored. Our history shows this PROBABLY/LIKELY doesn’t end well with Mario. But I guess anything is possible. I don’t think we exceed this year NEXT year. Meaning year 4: Same as spot or worse.

 

[Fox305]

Your assessment is all over the place. Miami won’t make playoff, but maybe they do. Maybe they lose first round game, maybe they lose in the ACCCG. Go away lol

You took a small piece of what was written (my potential outcome indication where I preface with saying “Mario next three years LIKELY goes something like this”) as a means to throw (and misfire) shade.

If you believe 2025 will be better than 2024 then stand on that. History shows that’s likely and rationally probably won’t be the case.

 

[Gsugradcanefan]

Respect but this isn’t true at all. Particularly in the NIL era.

Kirby smart coming off Richt going 7-5, basically came in and had two rebuild years before going the title game and losing on a last second bomb. So basically year 3 (we are beyond that now), UGA took off and that was it.

Oregon immediately is a red flag for us. They lose Mario and with a new scheme/system, they immediately become a power. Lanning has them winning with a Kibry/Saban-esque formula and it pays dividends.

Mario can’t call plays. He never coached a title team as a OC/DC. Reality is, only ONE modern coach had that resume and won and it’s Dabo. And Dabo with his generational QB took down a bama team poised for 2-3 titles in a row. We had a guy similar and lost to a 5th/3rd place ACC group of teams. It’s not equal.

Reality is losing foundational pieces that led to this teams outcome. And as of today, they haven’t and don’t seem to be replaced. Not only that, the coordinator who unit was directly repsonsibkd is still somehow employed. Recruiting shouldn’t hedge on such an individual so a serious title team likely would have already cut bait with him. Fact he still around speaks volumes. Buck stops with HC anyway though.

I think this season is NEAR/Likely our peak with Mario. Maybe we make a ACC title game in 2/3 years. Maybe we make a quarterfinal playoff game. With a guy like Mario, history shows you won’t get much more than that.

Kirby made the title game in his second year after going 8-5 his first.