Bryant McKinnie recalls memories of Mario Cristobal, what makes him a good coach

Former Miami Hurricanes offensive lineman Bryant McKinnie is one of the team’s legendary players who made up the 2001 national championship team. It was just prior to that season when McKinnie got to know another former Hurricane, Mario Cristobal.

From 1998 to 2000, Cristobal was a graduate assistant at his alma mater. He left to become a position coach at Rutgers, before returning to Miami in 2004 as an assistant and getting a head coaching job at FIU in 2007. Since then, he’s been an assistant at Alabama and Oregon before becoming the head coach at Oregon and returning to Miami as the Hurricanes’ head coach.

In all of this, Cristobal was an offensive lineman in his playing days and he was an offensive line coach by trade, connecting him to a player like McKinnie. After returning to campus, McKinnie reminisced about Cristobal, explaining what makes him a good coach.

“I think he has a great eye,” McKinnie said. “He has a great eye for potential and he’s seen that in like myself and a couple other players and knew to work with them. I feel that probably makes him a great recruiter. He has a great eye for that talent and also a mindset too.”

Miami currently has the 26th-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. However, there is time for that to change. Last year, Miami’s Class of 2023 was ranked sixth in the country.

As McKinnie explained, he and Cristobal also know it’s about more than recruiting talent. It’s about recruiting players with the mindset to compete, which will make the entire team better.

“You can have a lot of talent but if they feel like privileged or whatever like that, like you have to get guys who don’t mind coming here and working and coming to try and take people’s positions. That was another conversation we had earlier is like, the group I came in with, Vernon Carey and Phillip Buchanon and Clinton Portis,” McKinnie said.

“We talked about how we’re in our orientation, Clinton and Phillip were already like discussing how we’re only gonna be here for three years. That was their mindset. Like, I’m coming in, I’m taking somebody’s job, and I’m getting out of here. You know what I’m saying? They may not do that now with these NIL deals. They might want to stay a little long, enjoy that, but that was our mindset coming in, being hungry, and not minding competing. Trying to take somebody’s job makes that player raise their level to keep their job. So, it makes everybody better.”

Alonzo Highsmith on why he chose to work with Mario Cristobal

Another Miami legend, Alonzo Highsmith, went back to work for Cristobal at Miami as a general manager of football operations. Recently, he explained why he chose to work for Cristobal.

“I knew Mario from high school and he went to school here and we all go our separate ways,” Highsmith said.

“But I knew Mario from the recruiting trail. I’ve heard what a relentless recruiter he is, his work ethic and his dedication to building programs. I had the opportunity to spend a great part of the day with him when he was at Alabama. We sat and talked. He told me the structure of Alabama, why Alabama is Alabama. Then I saw him go to Oregon. Then when he came to University of Miami, he called me and we talked and I thought it was a no brainer for myself.”