OPINION: Today's system is ruthless and cold but Miami's Cristobal is playing ball to win

This is the New Age of College Football at Miami and beyond.

It’s unapologetic.

It’s raw and cold.

But those who don’t adjust will be left behind and Miami Coach Mario Cristobal clearly has no intention of being one of those guys.

The game is now about relentlessly adding talent to create the best on-field product possible and also making sure your collective and its stable of donors are getting what they are paying for by removing bad, low-value bills in the form of players not producing up to their NIL expense line.

Period.

Don’t laugh. Things are euphoric on signing days right now when players cash in with those big NIL deals created by the bidding war. But those that come to Miami or other colleges and don’t work as hard as they are expected to work, who don’t go to class, who smoke weed and fail drug tests, who tear down their team’s culture, are finding that those NIL deals can go away very quickly.

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Think about it. The people who donate to collectives like the Canes Connection are giving their money away. They don’t even get tax breaks. Their only return is the performance of those players on game day. That must be looked out for or else those folks will grow tired of giving their money away. And if that happens you can forget about the whole thing.

It’s a very interesting system that has evolved here, but Cristobal didn’t create it. He is doing his Miami job by working it, is out there playing ball by adding talent wherever he can find it.

The kids who live up to their end of the bargain will find that those checks will keep coming. Those who don’t will be sent to the compliance office to fill out paperwork to go into the transfer portal.

It doesn’t really matter if quality players come from the high school ranks or the portal itself. You add and add and add to the empire. You only worry about the NCAA scholarship limit of 85 players on the roster when you have to.

FACT: You can now sign unlimited high school players or portal players and figure out who’s actually better or who can develop to being better down the road.

It’s called using the parameters provided to the max.

And somehow it always seems to work out. Every team in the country will find a way to 85 even if a great number of the players presently in the portal will not find a new home.

The casualties are players like Miami defensive linemen Jayden Wayne and Jared Harrison-Hunte, who were sent to the transfer portal Monday as Miami cleared necessary space and also so new players can be added via the transfer portal over the next couple of weeks.

Wayne was in the process of getting passed up by young players like Cole McConathy, Malik Bryant and Marquise Lightfoot. Harrison-Hunte had been outplayed this spring by transfers CJ Clark and Marley Cook and there is more talent coming in this summer in the form of 5-star Justin Scott, highly-valued Artavious Jones and possibly a portal addition or two.

Miami is right at that 85-scholarship limit now, so any transfers signed in the coming days will mean that there will be additional cuts from the current roster.

To the public, these personnel moves might be providing shock value. But to coaches like Cristobal, this is the new business as usual. There are 85 total scholarships. Period. May the best use them wisely.

Miami has some basic roster parameters that it works from.

The ideal roster will have four scholarship quarterbacks.

It will have five running backs, five tight ends, 10 receivers and 16-18 offensive linemen.

On the defensive side, it will have 18 linemen, 9-10 linebackers and 14 defensive backs.

There is room for 3-4 kickers, punters and long snappers.

Right now Cristobal is trying to make his team better by following up what he has done on the offensive line by creating a bigger, stronger and tougher defensive line.

It’s a primary area of focus for team improvement right now that Harrison-Hunte and Wayne, for example, were not contributing to.

That’s why they are gone. There was nothing unfair about it. I watched many drills during the recent spring practice. Those two guys were simply not as good as the players in front of them. In today’s world those are bad expenses, low-hanging fruit. 

So better players are replacing solid-good players, and the bottom line is that means the system is working at Miami.

We find out just what that means this fall.