CaneSport Publisher Gary Ferman joins J.D. Pickell's On3 Roundtable: "I will be stunned if this season coming up is not significantly better"

CaneSport publisher Gary Ferman joined J.D. Pickell’s On3 Roundtable, breaking down how the Miami roster has gotten a shakeup as the Canes look to rebound strong off a 5-7 season.

“There’s always a sense of urgency to win in Coral Gables,” Ferman said. “But that has collided quite a bit with reality for many, many years now. Mario Cristobal left an established program at Oregon where he had already built it up and it was ready to compete for the Pac-12 and maybe even the college football playoffs.”

Ferman has covered Miami Hurricanes football since 1979, so he’s seen the ups and downs of the program … including the five national championships.

And he thinks that what Cristobal inherited off the Manny Diaz era was “a bigger disaster than (Cristobal) thought he was going to find.”

Miami is, of course, the job Cristobal always coveted as a Miami Columbus and University of Miami alum. But with this Canes job comes, as Ferman puts it, “a staggering amount of work.”

“We’ve been covering it every step of the way, and it’s literally team no sleep down here in Miami,” Ferman said. “We don’t get days off, we don’t get minutes off. There’s always somebody committing, something happening in the transfer portal. This is a race against time to try to get this program back to a competitive level.”

Cristobal has reshaped the roster with transfer departures, transfer arrivals, the No. 6-rated recruiting class last year and 12 commits already on board this cycle.

“It’s a complete overhaul of the roster,” Ferman said. “They’re just getting to the point now where they feel this year coming up they can be more competitive. Last year was a disaster, as we know. Next year they’re looking to take the next step forward, get to 8 wins, 9 wins if things go well, and keep the progression going where in 2024 and 2025 you make the playoffs.”

A big part of trying to make a quick turnaround isn’t just hiring new coordinators on both sides of the ball, but revamping an offensive line that struggled massively in 2022. That was a big reason UM had one of the nation’s worst attacks. So Miami brought in Alabama starter Javion Cohen as the starting left guard and UCF starting center Matt Lee out of the transfer portal. The team also added 5-star signees Francis Mauigoa and Samson Okunlola, who could be your starting tackles this year.

“Look at what has been done here just in recent months,” Ferman said. “Bring in Matt Lee, a guy who will be an NFL center, Javion Cohen, a starting level player from Alabama, sign two five-star tackles. Francis is going to start at right tackle, I’m not personally convinced that Samson is not going to wind up the starter at left tackle. I saw him yesterday at the practice facility and he looks so good physically. It’s just a matter of him catching up to game speed at the college level because he did play up there in Massachusetts at a little lower level of high school ball. This has been an adjustment for him.

“You mix in Jalen Rivers, maybe a Zion Nelson comes back – Mario Cristobal believes he is on his way to building what he is planning to be the best offensive line to ever play at the University of Miami within the next year or two.”

Part of the turnaround for Miami will not just involve the personnel, but also the culture. With all the roster churn, it was no easy task for Cristobal to change that culture. Ferman points out that this was “not a come in, snap-your-fingers kind of thing.”

“I think last year was culture shock, and that contributed to some of the losses and some of the problems they had on the field,” Ferman said. “But the expectations of being a Miami Hurricane were amped up massively last year. Now you’ve had that roster purge and the guys in the program are accustomed to the standards that are being set and I expect it to be significantly better this year from a culture standpoint, no doubt about it.”

If that’s the case, this season could be a building block for the future.

“I’m seeing a big difference this go-round,” Ferman said. “I will be stunned if this football season coming up is not significantly better than last year.

“The winning is so important in recruiting – with Cristobal you have a head coach who expects to sign every single kid he recruits. If you were going to have the kind of success rate in recruiting he is looking for with some of these 5-star kids you have to show you are winning on the field, developing players. That is the agenda for this 2023 season coming up, to prove that on the field.”