On3 Roundtable: Miami's sense of urgency is high as Mario Cristobal battles race against time

Miami head coach Mario Cristobal is entering his second season at the helm for the Hurricanes following a disappointing 5-7 debut season in South Beach. But what are the expectations of him and his squad this year?

That’s exactly what On3’s JD PicKell asked CanesSports‘ Gary Ferman in a recent On3 Roundtable, as Ferman broke down just how soon Cristobal is expected to turn things around for the Hurricanes.

“I mean there’s always a sense of urgency to win in Coral Gables, but that has collided quite a bit with reality for many many years now JD,” Ferman said. “Mario Cristobal left an established program at Oregon where he had already built it up and it was ready to compete for Pac titles and maybe even get in the College Football Playoff, he came to Miami and I’m guessing he found a bigger disaster than he thought he was going to find.”

Cristobal was Oregon’s head coach for four seasons, leading the Ducks to two Pac-12 championship wins before deciding to return to his alma mater. He not only played football at Miami for four seasons in college, but was a part of multiple Hurricanes’ coaching staffs for a combined six seasons before his return.

“I think he still takes the job because it’s obviously the job that he had always dreamed of, but this has been just an absolutely staggering amount of work, and of course we’ve been covering it every step of the way at canesport.com,” Furman said. “And it’s literally team no sleep down here in Miami. We don’t get days off, we don’t get minutes off, there’s always somebody committing, there’s always something happening in the transfer portal.”

This offseason alone Miami has had 25 players leave the team via the transfer portal, as Cristobal attempts to quickly rebuild his roster. The Hurricanes also had the No. 1 ranked high school signing class in the ACC and the No. 6 ranked class in the nation according to On3’s Industry Ranking, as well as boasting the No. 10 transfer portal class according to On3’s Team Transfer Portal Index.

“This is a race against time to try to get this program back to a competitive level and if you just take a look at whats happened, I guess it’s about 18 months since Mario got to Miami, I’ve lost count but it’s at least 40 exits into the transfer portal and out of the program that have been replaced by signees and transfers,” Ferman said. “It’s a complete overhaul of the roster that we’re witnessing and I think they’re just getting to the point now where they feel that this year coming up they can be more competitive.”

There’s no doubt that turning a program around and establishing a new culture takes time, but when your program is as big of a brand name as Miami, that turnaround timeline is expected to be completed sooner than later. It will definitely be interesting to see how Cristobal and his team perform this upcoming season, but where they stand a year or two from now may be even more intriguing.

“Last year was just a total disaster as you know, this year they’re expecting to take a next step forward and maybe get to eight wins, nine wins if things go well and keep the progression going to where in ’24 and ’25 you now can compete and maybe make the playoff,” Ferman concluded.