Mario Cristobal reveals lessons learned during roller-coaster Year 1 at Miami

Mario Cristobal didn’t have the season he was hoping to in Year 1 as the head coach at Miami, but he insists that he isn’t deterred by the fact that the Hurricanes went 5-7 in 2022.

Instead, Cristobal is as confident as ever that he is exactly where he is supposed to be. He spoke with the ACC Network at the 2023 ACC Football Kickoff about some of his takeaways from last season.

“I feel like I know more and more why we were brought to Miami,” Cristobal said. “As a player and as a coach, we had an opportunity to win a lot of games and a lot of championships. And then it slowly slipped away a little bit. And that didn’t happen overnight. And we were brought back to get it back on the national prominence level.”

Mario Cristobal played at Miami from 1989-1992, helping the Hurricanes win a pair of national titles.

After his playing days were over, Cristobal had a couple of stints on the Miami coaching staff, first as a grad assistant and then as a full-time assistant. He eventually worked his way up to being the head coach at Oregon and won a pair of Pac-12 titles during his four seasons there. He was hired as the head coach at Miami in December of 2021.

Cristobal has made it his goal to get Miami back to being mentioned alongside the elite teams in college football.

“That doesn’t happen overnight, but it does require your best effort and tremendous toughness, mental toughness, and resiliency. And I think we have more and more of that in the building,” Cristobal said. “We have more and more high-caliber professionals, elite mentalities, that are willing to work. Just work. There’s no magic potion. … You’ve gotta go do it.”

Cristobal believes Miami is ready to take a step forward in his second season as the head coach. The Hurricanes return several talented players on both sides of the ball, brought in the No. 6 recruiting class in the country for 2023, according to the On3 Industry Rankings and signed an extremely talented transfer class this offseason.

Now Cristobal has to take what he learned last season and build on it as the Hurricanes look to be competitive in the ACC.

“I feel a lot better about the level of competition at each position, which really drives the culture,” Cristobal said. “So there’s a lot of things I feel better about. I feel great about just starting practice. We just want to get to work.”