College football insider outlines why Mario Cristobal could be right fit for Miami

Mario Cristobal made quite the splash when he decided to leave the Oregon Ducks for the Miami Hurricanes this off-season. On Feb. 17, Bruce Feldman of Fox Sports spoke with Paul Finebaum of ESPN on The Paul Finebaum Show. Feldman talked about why he thinks Cristobal could be the perfect fit for the Hurricanes football program.

“Well, I think some of the things that have helped him right now, Miami, financially has the resources to compete with other top programs. You know when Miami was winning national titles, it was in spite of their facilities. In spite of their resources. They just had better talent than everyone else. I mean, what I think, if you’re a Miami fan, bodes well for the program is Mario Cristobal can recruit with anybody and he’s got a ton of juice within the state of Florida, especially in South Florida,” Feldman said.

“And I think if you’re Josh Gattis, if you’re Kevin Steele, you know they’re going to upgrade the talent level there. And he’s gonna be demanding because that’s kind of what he came from both as a guy who was on championship teams at Miami. And then he learned the Alabama recruiting model. He took a lot of that with him to Oregon. And he basically built the team that I think USC used to be. He built that in Eugene, Oregon as best he could,” the longtime college football expert noted.

“I think taking that to Miami, where they have been starved for success, and it has been a long, long time. I think most of the players he’s recruiting don’t remember when Miami was on top of the college football world. But again, we’ve seen other programs have big droughts when they bounced back, and they bounced back and had a lot of success. But it has been a long time. Now, you’ve seen Mario Cristobal make some moves early on. Even putting together a recruiting class late that’s made a pretty big impact there,” Feldman said.

Cristobal immediately worked his magic on the recruiting trail for the Miami Hurricanes

The former Oregon Ducks head coach was hired at Miami on Dec. 6, 2021. It didn’t take long for him to make some magic happen for the Hurricanes on the recruiting front.

Cristobal worked his charm in flipping former Alabama commitment, four-star tight end Jaleel Skinner to the ‘Canes on Dec. 17. Much of the credit also goes to Miami’s tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator, Stephen Field. Skinner is listed at 6-foot-4.5 inches, 216 pounds and is ultra-athletic in the open field.

He’s rated as the No. 4 tight end prospect in the country in the 2022 class, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

A gifted all-around athlete, he was also selected all-state by the South Carolina Basketball Coaches Association for his play on the hardwood in the 2021 season. Skinner selected Miami over double-digit scholarship offers, including Alabama, Texas, Florida State, Florida, and others.

It’ll be interesting to see what Cristobal can get done on the recruiting trail in the future, once he has his coaching staff finalized. With an incomplete staff, he already pulled in the nation’s No. 11 ranked recruiting class in the 2022 cycle, according to the On3 Team Recruiting Rankings.

He’s already off to a great start, since he pulled in Skinner and the nation’s No. 4 running back in the 2022 class, TreVonte’ Citizen. Citizen is out of Lake Charles College Prep (Lake Charles, Louisiana).

Now that Cristobal has assembled a dynamic staff in Coral Gables with the likes of Kevin Steele, Josh Gattis, and reportedly Charlie Strong, the ‘Canes will be even more dangerous on the recruiting front.