General manager of football operations Alonzo Highsmith shares how second offseason under Mario Cristobal has been different

Part of running a successful college football program is accumulating enough talent to be able to win more often than not and, to that end, having a quality general manager of football operations can be key.

That’s one of the reasons Miami fans felt so confident when coach Mario Cristobal tapped former Hurricanes great Alonzo Highsmith for just that role.

Even then, there was a big learning curve.

“When I first got here, I got here in June,” Highsmith said recently at the Miami Legends Camp. “So everything was new to me. I didn’t know the coaches, they didn’t know me. I didn’t know Mario. Mario knew me. We knew of each other.”

Point being it took Highsmith a little while to get settled before he was firing on all cylinders in his general manager of football operations role. And he’s not the only one who was in that position.

It took a while for everyone to get on the same page.

“Any time you’re putting a group of people of this magnitude together it’s a learning experience,” Highsmith said. “It takes a while to build a big staff. It takes consistency, familiarity with all the people, and that’s what we didn’t have last year. And it was a tough year last year, but I think we’ll be better for it.

“I think we all understand the task at hand and where we need to be as a program.”

Everyone in the organization simply needs to be responsible for his or her own part in things. For Highsmith, that means having a really good idea where the program’s needs are.

From a talent acquisition standpoint, a general manager of football operations is vitally important.

“When you first come into a situation like I came in last year, you don’t know what you don’t know,” Highsmith said. “You’re evaluating the players. You haven’t seen them play. You haven’t seen them practice. I had never seen any of these guys on film before. So after going through a summer, going through a season, now getting into the roots of recruiting again, watching all these players, you get to evaluate them against your team.”

With a full season under his belt, the general manager of football operations can better pinpoint where he thinks Cristobal and company need to be seeking additional help on the recruiting trail.

Highsmith looks at it as a blend of what’s on the roster versus what could be.

“Where I come from I always evaluate based on what I see on our team. You develop what you need, where you need to get bigger, stronger, faster, those positions, by being around. And you don’t know that till you see them play,” he said. “Well I got an opportunity to see them play last year and saw the weaknesses and strengths of the team. That’s what we’ve been working on to get our team stronger.”