Joel Klatt offers critique of Mario Cristobal hire

Former Oregon head coach Mario Cristobal headed home to Miami to coach in his hometown at his alma mater, and the general consensus is the Hurricanes ended up in a good position, especially after landing former Clemson athletic director Dan Radakovich on Thursday.

On Wednesday, Fox analyst Joel Klatt joined his colleague Colin Cowherd to discuss the head coaching hire, and while he thinks it was a win for Miami, he took a moment to play devil’s advocate.

“If I was taking the opposite side, I would say that Mario has fallen short of where he’s recruited,” Klate said. “If he’s recruited at level 10, they’ve played at level 8 as far as record in a pretty soft conference.”

Cristobal left Eugene after going 35-13 with a Rose Bowl win. Excluding 2017 when he coached one game, the former head coach never lost fewer than two games in a season. He lost to six unranked opponents in four years, and those teams had a combined 28-34 record in the years in which they faced the Ducks. Further, all of Oregon’s 2021 losses came in embarrassing fashion. They fell to a Stanford team that finished the season 3-9, and they were blown out by Utah on a national stage twice. 

Additionally, as Klatt alluded to, the Pac-12 is consistently deemed the lowest-ranking Power Five conference, as they have not put a team in the College Football Playoff since 2016.

While Cristobal brings with him some flaws, his authenticity and love for Miami and the surrounding culture may be exactly what a program that has had four head coaches (and three interim coaches) since 2007 craves.

“Having said that, his identity is exactly what Miami needs because he is Miami, he’s been there, he’s the son of Cuban immigrants,” Klatt added. “He has a no excuse mentality about his work ethic and his ethos. He wants every single day to be a reckoning in his program, not only because he learned that as an assistant for (Alabama head coach) Nick Saban, but because that’s what his upbringing was, and that’s what it was at Miami.”

Cristobal inherits a Miami team that has won double-digit games just once since 2003, and they have made a major bowl game only one time since their historic run in the early 2000s. Miami fans had high expectations for the 2021 team, and the hopes for the near future will be even higher with Cristobal at the helm.