OPINION: With 8 already headed for portal, Judgement Day is upon us and will be unlike anything you have ever seen

Judgement day is upon us. Eight Miami Hurricanes are already headed to the transfer portal.

This roster upheaval that we are seeing at Miami this far and heading into next week is going to be unlike anything we have ever witnessed.

It’s going to be sad in certain ways.

It is going to be brutal in others.

It also is going to be necessary, a reminder that college football is a business first, and that a business must be in order for it to succeed.

Miami football has not been in order for a very long time.

Saturday night’s season finale against Pittsburgh is the final game of the 2022 exhibition season that has been masquerading as a regular season. And just like it is in the National Football League every September, it will be followed by a cut day that we will be seeing to this degree for the first time ever.

“There is a plan in place,” coach Mario Cristobal said. “We have a responsibility to make sure our roster is filled with tough-minded, resilient, high-caliber individuals that want to be elite.”

Anybody worried about whether the guys left in Miami Hurricanes jerseys are going to show up and play hard Saturday probably don’t have a lot to worry about. Futures as Miami football players will literally be on the line and in some cases Cristobal will have difficult decisions to make Sunday morning because guys on the bubble won’t be out there quitting on their teammates.

NCAA rules give new head coaches 18 months to determine who they want on their rosters moving forward.

Cristobal is concluding month 12.

Judgement day is here.

Saturday the Hurricanes will try to win for a sixth time this season and qualify for a bowl game. Sources have told CaneSport that the Wasabi Fenway Bowl, which will host its first game on December 17, very badly wants a marquee name like Miami as a launching pad of sorts.

Sunday, regardless of the outcome Saturday night, exit interviews will begin at UM and hard decisions will have to be made by Cristobal and his staff and in many cases the players as well.

They are all free agents on December 5.

Some will express their complete commitment to the program and what Cristobal is trying to accomplish here.

Some will decide on their own to seek a different path, and that will be met with support by Cristobal because it will be easier than delivering the bad news in the opposite direction.

And some will simply be told that they don’t make the cut, to turn in their playbooks.

CaneSport has privately reviewed the roster and believes that there will be 25-28 current players, including the eight who have already declared their intentions, who will not be Hurricanes by the end of next week in addition to the 10 graduating seniors.

That would open 36-39 slots to be filled in recruiting and the transfer portal with UM playing this year at 84 scholarships.

The graduating seniors are Mitchell Agude, Lou Hedley, DJ Ivey, Caleb Johnson, Jacob Lichtenstein, Will Mallory, Antonio Moultrie, Justice Oluwaseun , DJ Scaife and Waynmon Steed. They may or may not participate in a bowl game if Miami defeats Pittsburgh.

Eight players have already departed – DE Eijah Roberts, LB Avery Huff, RB Thad Franklin, WR Key’shawn Smith, DT Allan Haye, STAR Gilbert Frierson and defensive backs Jalen Harrell and Keyshawn Washington.

We think that CB Tyrique Stevenson, who could come back for a final year, is leaning toward a departure. We think Akheem Mesidor, who has had a solid year but sees that he still can grow more, is leaning toward a NIL-fueled return along with quarterback Tyler Van Dyke.

Beyond that anything can happen. By our calculation, there are at least 19 more cuts to be made. Out of fairness to the players, we are not going to speculate here who will be on that list.

Everything that has gone on this season has not entirely been the fault of the players. To look at jt like that would be unfair.

But it is pretty obvious that the talent on the team needs to get distinctly better and very quickly if Miami is going to have a chance to avoid future seasons like this.

These next couple months are an unprecedented opportunity to totally transform the roster and reset the culture of the program. It is probably the greatest opportunity in that regard in the history of University of Miami football and Cristobal will have a chance to emerge on the other side with a team well on its way to becoming the college football monster that he envisions for the future.

We are talking about an Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State-like monster. Sooner rather than later.

Cristobal’s track record at Oregon is proof that he knows how to put it all together, understands from his time there and at Alabama what it is supposed to look like. It is why Miami chose him to lead the way back to relevance.

But money and commitment can’t always buy love. This next week on a human level is going to be the toughest part of the process and there are going to be a lot of unhappy people journeying into social media to wreak havoc or simply express their unhappiness. Be prepared for that.

The new rules of college football essentially allow free agency in both directions now. To acquire free agents in the form of recruits and transfers, you need spots. That means that you can’t have dead wood in your program, and Miami has a lot of it right now due to the failures of many years.

Some of the departed players will find new homes.

Some will be out of football.

National Signing Day used to be the biggest out-of-season day of the year in college football. No longer. This year it is December 5, the day the transfer portal opens. After that it will be the Early Signing Period that begins December 21.

The current NIL environment gives the programs with a war chest an edge. Thanks to John Ruiz and LifeWallet, Miami is one of those schools, maybe even the best-positioned. There also is a new Miami collective that has been raising money.

Those who don’t have a well-funded NIL partner or collective are already panicking because they know they won’t be able to compete.

“With the name, image, and likeness man, it is just a different world,” Kentucky Head Coach Mark Stoops said. “It is absolutely insane what’s going on. Transfers. Your own team. You know how many people are going after our young players? We have as good of freshmen as I’ve ever had. And it’s like a free-for-all.

“They’re just throwing money, you know what I mean? I don’t know, I don’t understand. It doesn’t seem healthy, I’m not sure it’s sustainable, but it’s legal, and once again I’m sorry. I hate to ask but we need the support. We need it desperately. It’s total free agency. Some of the best recruits we have are the ones we know, that are here, that can play, that are amazing young talents and are getting approached by everybody. It’s mass chaos.”

Sustainable? No way.

Rich people didn’t get rich giving away money like this.

But the current crop of recruits and players are beneficiaries right now if they are good enough. If they are not, like all these players who will be leaving Miami, they are victims.

Spots are spots. That’s a cold fact.

The schools that best take advantage of this Wild Wild East and West environment are going to have an edge when the rules tighten.

Cristobal is working tirelessly to make sure that Miami is one of the schools with that advantage.

Other coaches are grasping for ways to position themselves to compete. Stoops, for example, agreed to a contract extension to remain at Kentucky through 2031. Next fall he will make $9 million, a more than $2.5 million raise.

“I wish I could give it back to the collective because I would,” he said. “I want to and I need to at this point.”

It was suggested to him that that would be against the rules.

“There’s nobody to even report it to,” Stoops said. “I’m not singling out anybody here. I get tired of everybody telling me I’m talking about this school or that school. I’m just saying in general. We know that people have been caught giving money and nothing happens — when it was illegal! Well now it’s 100 percent legal. So how are they going to monitor that? It’s a crazy world. I don’t know.”

The difference between free agency in the NFL and at the collegiate level is there are not binding contracts for multiple years. All 85 players on every roster are about to be up for up for grabs or pink slips every single season now. And teams can sign as many players as they want as long as they stay under the 85 player limit.

Cristobal was asked this week where he sees Miami after all of the dust settles.

“Guys that stick around, they’ll hold up trophies,” Cristobal said. “This University academically, from a life standpoint, athletically, will give every student-athlete everything it has.

“For some guys it’s just not the right fit. You have to find out if someone loves the game, wants to be involved in the community, is willing to put in time, make commitments, sacrifices, because that’s what comes with this program. If you don’t have all those boxes checked you’re kind of rolling the dice.”

Sunday the boxes of every single player will start getting checked one by one. And only the ones who check them all will be left standing as Miami Hurricanes.

Judgement day is here.