MIAMI — Mario Cristobal worked a job he didn’t like for a public relations firm just down the road in Coral Gables from the University of Miami campus where the head football coach now sits. Around 1998, this would’ve been, the sport he loved gone from his life, his future uncomfortably unknown.
Cristobal had been a two-time national champion at UM as a starting offensive tackle but was undrafted by the NFL. Got signed by the Denver Broncos but got cut. Played a couple of seasons with the Amsterdam Admirals in NFL Europe but now found himself back home, at 27, out of football and aching the loss of it.
“I would fax Rob Chudzinski [a former UM teammate then Miami’s tight ends coach] drawings of how to protect against certain fronts and blitzes,” Cristobal, 53, recalls with a smile. “I was losing my mind not having football. After weeks of faxing, Rob says he talked to [head coach] Butch Davis and that I should come over to talk to him about being a G.A.”
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A G.A. (graduate assistant) is the lowest rung on the coaching ladder. “G.A.s get coffee and get put on fart patrol in study hall,” as Cristobal put it. “It won’t be like that,” Chudzinski promised.
He met with Davis. It would change his life. Davis asked why he wanted to do this, to get into coaching. He’d never been asked or ever considered it. As if an epiphany, as if realizing it himself for the first time, Cristobal told Davis:
“I want to be sitting in your seat one day.”
Davis now is 72 and retired, enjoying going to practices at St. Thomas University to watch his son Drew, an assistant coach. I asked Butch what he remembers about that day when Cristobal came to his office.
“It’s been a long time,” he said. “But I remember his passion.”
Two seasons as a G.A. under Davis set Cristobal off on what has been a 27-year coaching journey, to Rutgers, back to UM as an assistant, to FIU for his first head-coaching job in 2007-12, to Alabama on Nick Saban’s staff, to Oregon where he won a Rose Bowl, then — full circle — back to Miami in 2022.
To the job he always wanted, but one he immediately learned would not be easy.
“This one we knew would require every ounce of our existence,” he said this week, reflecting on the dream job with the nightmare start.
Cristobal is 12-13 his first two seasons back home. That bottom line is all most fans care about, even though it speaks to the depth of the major rebuild that awaited him in Coral Gables.
Now, as his Year 3 begins Aug. 31 in the Swamp against the old-rival Florida Gators, his Canes appear fully rebuilt and ready, stocked with the program’s best talent in many years, ranked No. 19 in the preseason poll and thinking higher, aiming to contend with Florida State and Clemson for the ACC championship game — and to be in the hunt in the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff.
That’s me saying that, not Cristobal.
I think UM will be close to great this year.
“I never get into projections,” says the coach, parrying the height-of-his hopes question. “All the rankings and that stuff, I could give a rat’s fat ass about any of that stuff.”
He knows how much better this team is than his first two, and that includes his coaching staff. But he knows this even more:
“Now it’s got to show on the field on game day.”
Put that previous simple sentence in bold and italics, and add an exclamation point.
It’s time for the proof in 2024.
If The U is finally back — or headed there in a way that’s undeniable — it has to show in Cristobal’s Year 3.
That’s why a tough opener at Florida looms so large. The Gators are down, 11-14 the past two years with coach Billy Napier fighting for his future. Miami is a 2 1/2-point road favorite and it feels like a must-win for UM because the game is a tone-setter. Win and the signs of Cristobal’s rebuild become tangible. Lose and the season sags right out the gate.
Cristobal is in a 10-year, $80 million contract — one that loudly trumpeted UM’s belief in him as the guy to win the school ‘s sixth national championship and first since 2001. A third straight disappointing season would surely spark speculation about Miami maybe swallowing a gargantuan buyout and moving on from him. It may take a 10-win season, a run at the ACC title game and being in the nix for the CFP to justify that contract and quell the critics.
Why should hopes be that high?
Cristobal masters traditional recruiting of high schools, still the bedrock of roster building. His first two signing classes ranked seventh in the nation in 2023 and fourth in ‘24, with the 2025 class presently also top-10. UM also has done well in the now-critically important transfer portal under this coach, including arguably the national get of the year in quarterback Cam Ward this past offseason, and another big prize in running back Damien Martinez.
Cristobal wants you to understand, in language sharper than I have heard from him before, how much of a rebuild he faced here in replacing Manny Diaz.
“There was 15 years of floundering, of mediocrity and downturns. A massive dip in personnel,” he begins. ”We followed the worst five years in Miami history related to the NFL draft. There had been a massive number of decommitments [in recruiting] that took a toll on the culture. It was a complete and utter rebuild. The University of Miami had not gotten to that point overnight. A lot of people over a lot of years kind of stood around and let it happen. Let it decline. Just accepted it. We needed tough-ass sons of bitches that love this place and have a passion for the sport. We needed the team DNA to go out there and kick some ass. We needed a massive change, in mentality as well as talent.”
As an indicator of the upsurge in talent via the rebuild, this year’s team has 10 different players on preseason watch lists for national position awards: The QB Ward, wide receivers Samuel Brown, Jacolby George and Xavier Restrepo, running back Damien Martinez, offensive lineman Jalen Rivers, defensive lineman Rueben Bain Jr., linebacker Francisco Mauigoa, defensive back Jaden Harris and kicker Andres Borregales.
UM led the conference with five preseason All-ACC picks in Ward (projected player of the year), Restrepo, Bain, Mauigoa and Borregales. Ward, Bain, Restrepo and tackle Francis Mauigoa (Francisco’s brother) all made CBS Sports’ national top 100 players list.
If you heard anger in those words of Cristobal’s describing how the state of the Hurricanes had eroded, you aren’t wrong.
Cristobal is fed up with what has befallen the UM brand built on five national crowns between 1983 and ‘01, two of them he helped win. Since UM’s last top-10 poll finish in 2003 the school has had one 10-win year. One bowl victory since 2006.
Say what you will about this coach, and the 12-13 start invites it, but even the biggest Canes fan should not doubt this:
Mario Cristobal loves The U more than you.
He is Cuban-Miami born and raised. Has the sweat-equity in the program. He lived how good it an be and what the mountaintop feels like. He was dreaming about being in the seat he’s in long before he coached across town at FIU, so near but so far from the dream.
“I was tired of Miami getting picked on and put down,” he says. “I was sick of it. Beyond sick. Now I am blessed with the opportunity to do something about it. From a life standpoint, a being raised standpoint, a principle standpoint — I am here to do something about it.”
When he says, “As sure as the sun will rise and set tomorrow, Miami will be back,” trust that’s closer to his life’s mission than just a career goal.
Now comes the season when Mario Cristobal must begin to earn back the faith and bring the proof.
