OPINION: It’s unquestionably Mario’s team now and that should bode well for the Miami Hurricanes

The commitments for the 2025 recruiting class have started coming with a flurry for Miami, which means the Hurricanes under Mario Cristobal are once again on their way to a Top 10 recruiting class.

Hopes for the 2024 season that will begin August 31 against Florida in Gainesville have not been higher in Coral Gables for a very long time.

It’s year three of the Mario era at Miami and it’s looking like that it could be time for a Return on Investment at The U that will make people feel better about the massive University commitment that has been made in the football program, NIL, the athletic department in general and in Cristobal himself.

So much has changed since Cristobal was enticed to leave an established program at Oregon to come home and rebuild Miami. Athletes were granted the right to monetize their “brand”, donor-driven collectives became the driver of college football and basketball in particular, and now there is a additional transition taking place toward a revenue-sharing model.

Miami got out front of it all, transforming the University in a large sense, because of the massive financial investments that Cristobal insisted upon before he would come home. Credit both him and the muscle at the upper echelon of the University for having that vision.

Manny Diaz might argue that if he had the Cristobal-level resources to work with that he might have fared better at Miami. But the evidence would be stacked against him in that argument. All you have to do is look at the horrible track record of the recruiting classes under Diaz’ watch to shoot down any thoughts in that direction.

But as everything has changed, a constant has remained – the importance of recruiting, evaluation and development no matter what the NIL contracts say. Cristobal has proven himself in that world and now Miami is hoping to see the results that it has been looking for. Just win.

Xavier Restrepo is one of just seven players left from the Manny Diaz era. Credit: Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports

There are only seven players left on the roster that Cristobal didn’t recruit – WRs Xavier Restrepo, Jacolby George and Mike Redding, OL Zion Nelson and Jalen Rivers, LB Chase Smith and PK Andy Borregales. Nineteen of the 22 position starters this season will be guys Cristobal hand-picked in recruiting or out of the portal, with the lone exceptions Restrepo, George and Rivers.

This is Mario’s team now.

So what does that mean?

Well before he left Oregon, Cristobal had led the Ducks to three upper-tier bowl games in his four years as a head coach. That’s as good a percentage as any active coach in the country, including people like Kirby Smart and Ryan Day. Cristobal led Oregon to 11 wins in 2019 and 10 in 2021.

The two development years with five and seven wins at The U have impacted those stats, but even at three major bowls in six years as a head coach, Cristobal is only behind USC’s Lincoln Riley, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, Day, and Smart in terms of success percentage by that data point. The numbers are similar when you measure conference titles (Cristobal won two in the Pac-12), though you need to add Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer to that conversation since he won one title in two seasons at Washington.

So although you never take anything for granted, the prospects for success this season are exactly what the University and its heavy hitters were buying in committing $8 million a year to Cristobal and tens of millions more since then for everything else.

Nobody is looking to count chickens before they hatch. We will find out a heck of a lot about this team in the opener at Florida at the end of August. But as off-season workouts continue, things are definitely passing the eye test with Washington State quarterback Cam Ward slinging it around the indoor practice facility and 41 other newcomers making their presence felt.

“Call it what it is, before you beat somebody else, you gotta really know who you are,” Cristobal said recently on the Always College Football Show. “I think our team, through recruiting, culture, academics just pounding and doing the right thing all the time, we’re learning more and more about what it is to be a Miami Hurricane.”

Vegas likes what it sees, setting the over-under for this team at 9.5 victories. Not that anything under will be good enough for anybody with Hurricane passion.

“Miami didn’t slip up overnight, so getting Miami to be Miami again doesn’t happen overnight,” Cristobal said. “It’s been a lifelong dream but it’s also an obligation. It’s my obligation…to make sure that Miami establishes those standards and culture, having played here and having gone away and learned from the very best, now applying that to get some great results.

“You don’t just throw the ball out there and become Michael Irvin. It’s making sure you’re getting those types of players that can be that and then grinding on the field like those guys did.”

Ward looks like he might be that kind of player, even if for just one season.

“He’s helped us evolve,” Cristobal said. “You’re not limited with him. He can do a lot of things. He’s got a tremendous capacity, a super high football IQ, and his ability to improvise is sometimes better than the designed play.

“He does play within the system. But if it’s not exactly the right call, he can make you right when you’re wrong. Whether it be with his feet, his arm angles, his accuracy, or his ability to just improvise — he’s really added a lot.”

Miami shows up in 2024 as a program that has talent, but that’s gone 17-21 the last three years. That kind of losing creates perception and that will remain until Miami goes into The Swamp and takes down Florida, until it survives early season games against potential traps USF and Cal on the road. Miami is better than all those teams, but being better doesn’t matter anymore. Miami has supposedly been better than a lot of teams it has lost to in recent years.

The Hurricanes should also beat overmatched Ball State and a pretty good Virginia Tech squad at home, which would bring them to their toughest two games on paper – back-to-back matchups at Louisville Oct. 19 and then against FSU at home Oct. 26. The results of those games could mean the difference between this season being an exclamation point or the latest letdown.

The Canes finish with Duke, Georgia Tech, Wake Forest and Syracuse, none of which really scare you, although the Yellow Jackets could again be sneaky good. The schedule in its entirety looks very non-threatening. Until somebody changes that, of course, and threatens the whole thing, which you kind of know will happen because it always does.

“There’s nothing for us to talk about,” Cristobal says. “There’s no hype, there’s no nothing. For us, honestly, right now it’s not about going back in time. It’s about shutting our mouths, going to work, and going to get better.

“We’ve been working our butts off to improve and progress to this point and we’re excited. The momentum within the walls here is awesome. So let’s go get to work and let’s find out.”

Training camp begins in three weeks.

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