Before I start with the hype, let’s be honest about what we’re not getting with Mario.
We’re not getting a QB guru. He signed four blue-chip QBs who don’t play. His starter stinks. And he should have won a Heisman with Herbert.
We’re not getting a schemer. He will rely on staff in an era of coaching turnover.
We’re not getting a reliable gameday coach. Some of Mario's losses bring back memories of Botch Davis.
And we’re not getting an elite CFP coach like Lincoln Riley or Brian Kelly. He hasn’t reached that level.
But we have time to argue about that later. Mario Cristobal just moved us into the modern era without coaching a game. He knew our problems and he knew he had options. With that leverage, he demanded total commitment from the school. Facilities. Recruiting budget. Coach salaries. Athletic director. We, finally, showed the money.
The jokes are over. Oregon is the symbol of college football spending. They changed the game with Phil Knight money. They wanted to keep Mario. They gave him everything he asked for. Oregon still couldn’t outbid Miami. That is a statement to the rest of the sport.
Mario knows the standard. Yes, he knows the Miami Standard as a player. But that’s a memory. Mario knows the championship standard in 2021. He knows what Alabama has. He knows what Oregon has. And he’s in a perfect position to demand all of it from a school swimming in new money.
So what are we paying for? A proven, winning P5 coach. That’s the biggest difference between Mario now and Mario every other time his name came up. This isn’t about Miami ties. This is about wins and losses.
Since becoming a P5 head coach, Mario has won 73% of his games. Here are the names with the highest winning percentages as P5 coaches:
Ryan Day- .892
Lincoln Riley- .846
Kirby Smart- .810
Nick Saban- .804
Dabo Swinney- .803
Jimbo Fisher- .760
Mario Cristobal- .729
Brian Kelly- .702
He didn’t inherit a juggernaut, either. Oregon was 11-14 the two years prior. FIU was 0-12 when he got there. He built them up and took them to back-to-back bowls. And this was despite a third-world athletic department.
We already know about the recruiting. It’s elite. A former Saban assistant told me Cristobal was the best recruiter he had ever seen. He was National Recruiter of the Year as an assistant and he built a recruiting machine as the boss. Top 10 classes and Top 10 draft picks. No head coach is more personally engaged.
We can talk about pretty uniforms, but Oregon recruited worse than Miami before Mario got there. It’s a state full of hikers, not football players. Here at Miami, Mario can recruit the best players in the country and sell the hottest city in the country.
But here’s the most important thing to me: our greatest weakness as a program is Mario’s greatest strength. Florida does not develop offensive linemen in bulk. And the good ones are hard to land out of state. Our South Florida OL routinely outperform our national recruits. That's because when we go out of state, we’re shopping in the bargain bin. We go to Iowa to get Matt Pipho and Zach Dykstra, not the cream of the crop.
Since 2005, Miami has signed five blue-chip linemen from out of state. That’s less than one every three years. Mario himself landed three of them as a Miami staffer. For comparison, Oregon has landed 11 in the past five years alone. Mario’s recruiting profile will change because of geography. He'll land less Polys and more city kids. But he will not sleep until we have lines that can compete with the big boys.
And the truth is, that’s what the modern game is about. We always focus on the passing game becoming more mainstream. But at the CFP level, the real differentiator is the ability to recruit big, athletic monsters. Kirby Smart didn’t build up Georgia by outscheming the next man. They are physically dominant through recruiting and infrastructure. Same with Michigan. Alabama has added the explosive element, but their foundation hasn’t changed. If we want to compete in those games, we need what Mario provides. Conversely, he walks into a situation where his biggest weakness (QB) is the team’s biggest strength.
I’m just ready for a grown-up program. No more cracks about facilities. No more guards doing moonsaults on 4th down. No more Big 10 teams brutalizing us. Miami is finally spending on substance. We aren’t distracting people with shiny chains. This is the first day in a long time that people will take Miami seriously. We're already seeing the hate return. In the end, they’ll fear us.
Go Canes.
