Call me overly critical, but in my book Cristobal legitimately won 1 Pac12 title in his 4 years at Oregon. I don't consider the title he won in 2020 during Covid to be completely legitimate, because the sole reason Oregon made it to the title game was that too many Washington players got Covid.
Oregon was 4-3 at the time, with two of those losses being to 1 win teams. That's embarrassing. Yet that one legit Pac12 title in 2019 and beating Ohio State convinced the UM fanbase that Cristobal was UMs savior.
Fact is that UM fans would die of laughter if Al Folden bragged about winning the ACC coastal title the year that UNC got banned. UM could have claimed the title but chose not to play in the acc championship game because it had self imposed penalties. 7-6 UM team calling itself ACC coastal champs because the actual champ couldn't participate? Nah.
When Cristobal was coaching in the pac12 he really only had one other quality team in the conference - Utah. And well, it's best if we don't talk about his track record against them. At least Lanning can defend his record by saying he had the #2 team in the country in his conference this season.
To me, the Biggest difference between Cristobal and Lanning right now is that Lanning hasn't been coaching long enough to have a reputation attached to him (good or bad). Lanning is still able to get top WRs and QBs to transfer to Oregon because those players think he will help their draft stock. Cristobal unfortunately has earned the reputation of being a QB killer. I agree it is unfair and stats show otherwise, but the perception is the perception.