Thirty-five years of sports writing teaches you to enter any team’s preseason Media Day prepared to hear mostly rehearsed overcoached platitudes (translation: boring quotes).
So, it came as no surprise that the University of Miami football players, sitting at folding tables in matching orange polo shirts, delivered mostly matching answers as media members swarmed them with questions on Tuesday afternoon at the Hurricanes’ perfectly climatized indoor practice facility.
The main theme of the day was how the program has changed under first-year $80 million coach Mario Cristobal and whether long-suffering UM fans will finally have the nationally relevant, championship-caliber team they have been craving for more than two decades.
The answer, in summary: Yes, because Cristobal is a great coach and motivator. He has a commanding presence and understands “The U.” He surrounded himself with a great staff. And everyone is working extremely hard, eager to bring Miami football back to national prominence.
Asked if the U is back, the stock answer was: “The U is back to work.”
(Are you still awake?)
In other words, similar answers to what we heard at Media Day 2019, the start of The Manny Diaz era and at Media Day 2016, the start of The Mark Richt era.
There was plenty of buzz on those days, too. Diaz and Richt were also lauded as Miami guys who bled orange and green and understood “The U.” Diaz ushered in “The New Miami” and invited 1,000 lucky fans to the first practice. Then-athletic director Blake James spoke of “a real wave of energy” at Richt’s first Media Day, boasting of increased donations and season ticket sales.
Both coaches delivered impassioned speeches as they kicked off their debut seasons.
Diaz, August 2019: “This is UM. This is Miami. We don’t have to beg anyone to be a Miami Hurricane. And that’s in recruiting and that’s in anything else. We have to start to create value to what it means to play for the Miami Hurricanes. Because right now in my mind that has been devalued. ... I want to find some guys that are all for the U. Guess why? Because that’s how Miami won in the past. And I don’t care what guys are ranked in recruiting. I don’t care what guys have done on our team. We’re going to win with guys that love the University of Miami. That has been proven over and over and over again.’’
Richt, August 2016: “Do you think those (former UM) players invented the word swag? You think the players said, ‘Hey, we got swag?’ They didn’t do that. What’d they do? They won. If they didn’t win, nobody would be talking about swagger. If they didn’t line up and whip somebody across the field, there’d be no swagger. I want our players to play well enough and win enough for somebody to give us a name. If it’s swagger, fine. But swagger to me is not antics. It’s production. It’s execution.”
And Tuesday, this from Cristobal: “A credit to the players for being open to such a demanding regimen. What we do is hard. We go now. And we go hard.
“It’s clear how much I love Miami, live and die for it and there’s people in this building that feel the same way. Because of what we what to accomplish, there’s a lot of work to do. We’re in that submarine now, shut out from the outside world and we can really keep giving our players with education pieces, with the team concept, finding ways to get better, eliminating sensitivity, and understanding that the work is what it is, and it takes what it takes. This is my favorite time of the year.”
So, why should we believe Cristobal will get UM football to where Diaz and Richt couldn’t? What is he instilling in those young men that was missing? Why should skeptics (and who could blame them?) give Cristobal and his staff the benefit of the doubt?
There were hints on Tuesday, sprinkled among the cliché answers.
Cristobal does not allow hats in the building. Pants must be pulled up to the waist. If a meeting is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., players are required to be there no later than 7:25 p.m. Shirts are tucked in for practice. And no cellphones in team meetings.
“When Coach Cristobal walks into a room, you feel that intensity,” said quarterback Tyler Van Dyke. “He knows how to discipline. You’ve got to do stuff right or you’re going to pay consequences. No phones in meeting rooms. That’s new. At times last year and the year before I’d see people picking up their phones during meetings. When the coach is talking, you have to listen, so I think it’s smart that we don’t have that anymore. Everyone is locked in.”
Quarterback Jake Garcia agreed: “Coach Cristobal has a presence. When he walks into a room, he doesn’t have to say a word.”
Also, Cristobal got rid of the turnover chain. It was fun, for a while. It was very Miami. But bling doesn’t work when you’re 7-5. It was time to retire the chain.
Defensive coordinator Kevin Steele is 63 years old. He has worked alongside some of the game’s best coaches — Bobby Bowden, Tom Osborne, Dabo Swinney and Nick Saban. He was on Saban’s staff with Cristobal in 2013 and 2014.
Asked what makes people so excited about Cristobal taking over UM’s program, Steele replied: “That’s really an easy answer. It’s not what I’ve seen. It’s what I knew when I came here because I would not be here if he was not the head coach at Miami.
“He’s an outstanding person and he commands the room when he walks in, naturally. He doesn’t have to act like he’s in charge. It’s evident by his personality, his wisdom, the way he communicates that he is the leader.”
Though Steele does not have South Florida roots, he has recruited the area since the 1980s, coached against the Hurricanes in the Orange Bowl stadium, visited Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson when they were UM coaches, and he is determined to get the Canes back to their glory days.
“I saw UM first-hand, and I know what this place is and what it can be with a lot of hard work; and it will be,” Steele said. “If we work hard and get the culture right, then there’s no question because of its location, what it’s done before and we have the head coach and staff and players who have bought in and are working with that energy that got UM to where they were.
“To be quite frank, everyone wants a chance to be a champion. When you’ve done it as long as I’ve done it, you don’t make a decision to go somewhere unless you think you can be a champion. It’s been done here, and it will be done again.”
Steele was on Saban’s staff when they took over a struggling Alabama program in 2007. Within three years, it was on top. “It’s about physical and mental toughness, backed up with hard work,” Steele said. “It’s not magic.”
It remains to be seen if The U is back. But the Canes are definitely back to work, and something about Steele’s conviction made this skeptical reporter into a believer.
