We know that major change at the top of any team comes with no guarantees. Change, at best, brings with it excitement and that gift so fragile yet so powerful: Hope.
We also know that, until the games begin again, the reset on hope is all there is and that — when you are desperate enough — that is quite enough.
What Miami Hurricanes football has just done is delivering on all counts.
The promise of a return to glory days, something hinted at but not accomplished for 20 years, has fresh oxygen. The grumpy old ghosts have awakened. Swagger — which you earn by winning, not by handing out jewelry on the sideline in the middle of losing — is dusting itself off.
Mario Cristobal, arriving from Oregon but coming home, was the national prize UM sought with focused determination, and won.
Short of Nick Saban suddenly tiring of Tuscaloosa and wanting to give living in Miami one more try, UM just landed the best available head coach in college football — especially for this South Florida market.
Cristobal of course was born and raised Miami, from Columbus High, and a former national champion offensive tackle with the Hurricanes. Way beyond the family ties, though, Cristobal is a proven winner, a lightning-bolt force of energy and (maybe best of all) a vaunted recruiter.
Task 1: Before he has a chance to win his first game in Coral Gables, Cristobal must win Miami. Win the backyard. Keep the best local high school stars at home to win UM’s long-elusive sixth national title.
Past champion coaches Howard Schnellenberger and Jimmy Johnson used to preach that. But over time The U has seen its backyard power a victim of poaching. Cristobal must win it back, with force and domination.
I know, skepticism is to be expected. It has had 20 years, since the Canes’ last championship parade in 2001, to grow and harden like a callous.
UM has trod this path before. Randy Shannon. Mark Richt. Manny Diaz. The Hurricanes have tapped the bloodline before and seen former players, seen family ties, as the map back to glory.
Will it work this time?
It can. Yes.
Shannon and Diaz, fired Monday, had no track record as college head coaches. Richt did, but was older and perhaps most famous for never having lifted Georgia all the way to the top.
Cristobal honed his trade at FIU before winning big at Oregon, with four years in between as an Alabama assistant, his credibility minted by Saban, which in this sport is akin to a blessing from the Pope.
He was 35-13 at Oregon, albeit with a lopsided loss in Saturday’s Pac-12 Championship Game his parting result.
Cristobal can do here what other “family members” have not because of his pedigree and recruiting fire, but also because the UM administration finally has opened the wallet and entered the modern age of spending big to win big.
I recently wrote Miami should go outside the family for its new coach. That was before I imagined anybody might pry Cristobal away from Phil Knight’s Nike money at Oregon.
Coming in at more than $8 million per season for at least five years, Cristobal will make double what Diaz did. Less splashy but just as important, Cristobal will have a budget for assistant coaches that dwarfs what his predecessors have had.
The commitment finally seems in place.
As with Cristobal, UM likewise is swinging for the fences for its new athletic director in targeting Clemson’s Dan Radakovich to replace the dismissed Blake James.
Radakovich was at UM early in his career but spent the past 10 years helping lift Clemson to national prominence. The Tigers slipped a tad this season, but Radovich has made a living knowing how to win the Atlantic Coast Conference, which UM has failed to dominate.
Miami has been beat up in the national press for allowing Diaz to twist in the wind while it pursued Cristobal.
It did put Diaz — and UM — in a very tough spot, as he went into living rooms recruiting for the Canes the past two weeks with everybody in said room knowing the school was shopping hard for his replacement.
It’s unfortunate Diaz’s three seasons had to end in that sort of humiliation, but the university was covering itself, fully intending to bring Diaz back had Cristobal changed his mind.
And it is not as if UM volunteered publicly it was shopping for Diaz’s replacement. Your Friend The Media put that out there.
This change has nothing to do with impatience, by the way, except to the degree 20 years since the last championship is an ongoing and fertile Petri dish for impatience to grow.
In this case Diaz got three years and didn’t do enough. Didn’t win enough (21-15 including 0-2 in bowls), and didn’t do enough to shake the notion he was a natural defensive coordinator whose head coach clothes never quite seemed the perfect fit.
He will coach again. He has the resume to re-enter as a Power 5 assistant, perhaps somebody’s defensive chief. Heck, if I were FIU, shopping for a new head coach to replace Butch Davis, I would be on the phone with Diaz right now.
As for the Hurricanes?
They are bringing in exactly who they wanted, their ideal.
Now, as the savior arrives, all of the same old excuses disappear.
UM has its guy, in a way it hasn’t for two decades.
Mario Cristobal will restore the Hurricanes to football glory, or, well ... he better.
