Mario Cristobal calls for the end of Thursday, Friday games in college football

Miami coach Mario Cristobal has plenty on his plate right now. His team was just selected as a College Football Playoff participant, which means the path to a potential national championship is now clearly illuminated.

Still, Cristobal found some time in his day recently to join the Nonstop podcast with Kirk Herbstreit and Joey Galloway. And on the podcast he made a surprising admission.

The topic was on the sport in general right now and how things have shaken out in recent years. Mario Cristobal sees at least one area that is just begging for change.

“For me, one of the top things, it’s minor in the eyes of many: I would eliminate Thursday and Friday games, man,” Cristobal said. “College football is for Saturday. That drives me bananas.”

Miami was a party to only one Friday game this season, but it proved to be a costly one. The team lost to Louisville at home in front of a fairly sparse crowd in Miami Gardens.

Mario Cristobal doesn’t want to see games like that anymore. While the schedulers have generally avoided putting teams on too short a week, sometimes it’s impossible to control for that. Regardless, Cristobal thinks it’s about sticking to tradition.

“That might be petty to some but, man, I want college football on Saturdays,” he said. “I really, really do. I want more time around our players.”

The latter reveal was not just a one-off comment, either. If there are other changes in the sport that Mario Cristobal thinks could be tackled, it’s the working calendar.

Coaches are often restricted on what they can do with players by where they’re at in the calendar year. Cristobal would like to see some of those restrictions loosened.

“Some of these, what’s this eight hours a week, and 10 hours?” Mario Cristobal said. “What is that? Like you signed up for this and we are investing heavily and we’re supposed to develop you. Now you’re going to limit the amount of it?

“You have double the coaches in the NFL and you have triple the players have in college than you have coaches, but we have a fraction of the time that they have. That part blows me away.”