CORAL GABLES — Four years ago, Mario Cristobal got on the plane of the Mas brothers, Jose and Jorge, and took a one-way flight from Oregon in what was the headline move in the reawakening of the University of Miami’s football program.
Monday, six days before playing Texas A&M in the College Football Playoffs he was asked to look back at the journey.
“Those early years are like dog years, you know,” he said.
They win now even if they don’t win. That’s what making the playoffs mean. It’s degrees of winning on this next step, of how high they possibly climb in their first playoff appearance after this long journey back to national acclaim.
How long a journey has it been? It goes beyond inheriting a team that had the 100th-ranked offense in Cristobal’s first year of 2022, beyond finishing 3-5 in the ACC in 2023, far beyond the brick-by-brick building of a roster to carry back-to-back 10-win seasons these past two seasons.
Consider Saturday’s game in College Station will be the Hurricanes’ biggest since the 2003 game against Ohio State for the national championship. Almost twenty-three years ago it lost that game in a controversial end, then started the slide into the abyss that didn’t end until Miami got serious about sports again.
You can pinpoint when it got serious, too. It came up with the plan. Or: “The Plan,” as some in Miami’s athletic department call it.
During the 2021 football season, Miami president Julio Frenk put out a statement saying the CEO of UHealth, Joe Echevarria, and his chief of staff, Rudy Fernandez would run the athletic side of the university for him.
That made everyone happy. Frenk was an academic in the ivory tower, not a sports guy on the field.
Echevarria, who succeeded Frank as president in 2022, is that guy on the field. Literally on the field. He’s walked around players stretching before games. He was at the NFL draft table when Cam Ward was the No. 1 pick last spring. He’s the rare president who’s a sports fan right down to reading stories and listening to sports talk on the radio.
Who better to install a plan to bring Miami athletics into the modern age of big spending? Echavarria, Fernandez, the Mas brothers (who are on a winning run between Inter Miami and the University of Miami) and auto magnate Manny Kadre brought new thinking and new money to the program.
For years, the football program was so underfunded then-coach Randy Shannon showed how he was the second-lowest-paid coach in the ACC. A few years later, Al Golden wouldn’t fire offensive coordinator Mark D’onofrio not just because they were friends, but also, “There’s the cost of replacing him,” an official said.
Cristobal, to show there was no problem with making decisions or spending money, fired both his coordinators after his first season in Miami. He fired his second defensive coordinator last season and brought in Cory Hetherman this year to get winning results.
It took Cristobal four years to build something from nothing at Florida International, then on a bigger scale at Oregon. Now he’s done so again.
“We never strayed from the vision, from the process,” Cristobal said. “You prepare for this way back in January and bring it together and bring it to life.”
The Plan was simple. Big money to spend. Big swings of hiring. They had to sweat a couple of bad losses this season to Louisville and SMU, then sweat through the CFP voting process.
Fernandez said four years ago when Cristobal was hired, “I won’t celebrate until we reach the College Football Playoff.”
They’ve reached it. It’s not time for a celebration with Saturday’s kickoff looming. They question for this game isn’t if they win. At this point, it’s how much they win.
