Mario Cristobal had a windy road that led him back to Hurricanes

Mario Cristobal has the Miami Hurricanes one win away from hoisting a championship trophy for the first time since 2001.

It’s been a long time for the Hurricanes, who were arguably one of the top programs in college football for many years before a slump from 2007 to when Cristobal arrived in 2022.

If they beat the Indiana Hoosiers in the championship game, Cristobal will have arrived once again at the pinnacle of the sport. He was there before as a player at Miami in 1989 and 1991, so he knows what it feels like.

The path his career has taken as a coach has been a windy one, though. Heck, he went 1-11 as the head coach at Florida International University in 2007 and was fired after going 3-9 a few seasons later.

Cristobal could have given up his head-coaching dreams at that point, but then he wouldn’t be where he is today. It all plays a role in getting him here, and he said as much in a recent news conference.

“You know, I’m pretty stubborn,” Cristobal said (h/t On3). “Always have been stubborn. In my mind, we were gonna win a national championship there [at FIU], and people would look at me like I was crazy. Sometimes if you don’t move and God wants you to move, he’ll kick you so you can move. For whatever reason, that’s the way it worked out.”

Mario Cristobal’s windy path made him the head coach he is today 

After he was fired by FIU, Cristobal landed on his feet, and he worked under Nick Saban at Alabama. There, he honed his craft and became known as one of the best recruiters in college football.

That led to an offensive coordinator role at Oregon, where he eventually became head coach. Then, a few years later, the Hurricanes came calling to make him their head coach, and the rest is history.

Again, he’s now 60 minutes away from bringing Miami its first championship in years. If he never got fired from FIU and wound up under Saban at Alabama, though, perhaps none of these would be a reality in the here and now.

“It was a blessing because I had the opportunity to go learn under Coach [Nick] Saban,” Cristobal explained. “And then eventually end up at the University of Oregon. Blessed to be there. And it all led back here to the University of Miami. At the time, you can’t see that. You can’t see straight when something like that happens, especially when you invest every waking moment of your life into it. But I thank God that it did.”