Mario Cristobal reflects on challenging first year at Miami, how close team is to taking next step

Miami stumbled to a 5-7 finish in its first season under coach Mario Cristobal, far from the kind of season many envisioned or wanted to have as an introduction to the new way of doing things.

For Cristobal, though, it was a building block. He believes the team is poised to have a terrific second season, in part because of the leadership cultivated last season.

“It starts with that right there,” Mario Cristobal said. “Elite people that are elite athletes and that hold really, really high standards.”

There’s obviously more to high level success than just really elite people with elite standards, but that’s a good place to start.

Cristobal has done what he can to avoid compromising on core standards at any turn, willing to take the longer rebuild in the event it’s the right way to build.

“I think whenever you start up at a program again and it has a rebuilding aspect, you have to sometimes go through a season like that and not make any excuse or sugar-coat it, but you go directly at the things that need to be addressed, and it starts with people,” Mario Cristobal said. “People in the locker room, people on the coaching staff, people in a support staff role.

“What we feel that we have done is that we have added some elite components in the personnel department, some unique additions at the line of scrimmage, outside on the perimeter, in the secondary at linebacker.”

Miami’s talent level has always been fairly high relative to its college football peers. That’s one of the reasons the lack of consistent success has been so confounding.

It’s hard to figure out sometimes what exactly is missing.

Cristobal seems hopeful everything needed to win and win big is now in place and it’s just a matter of time.

“I feel like our culture, led and driven by our team leaders, has created ownership in our program,” Mario Cristobal said. “In other words, the steps that you cannot skip, those things have been in full force since the end of last season, and it’s led to a great offseason, a great signing day, class of best in our school’s history, a top-10 portal class.”

Above and beyond any of that, Cristobal has back the players that fought through last season’s tough results and were willing to stick around to see it through.

That’s when a rebuild can become successful.

“Most importantly, the retainment of our top players and top leaders led to a great spring and now has had a great summer,” Mario Cristobal said. “Now we’re eager to get to camp so we can put all of that to good use, and the bottom line is just to get to work. Not worry about anything or anyone and just get to work and put to good use this hard work that we have done.”