READ: The U Is Back. Miami One Step From Reclaiming Former Glory<\/a><\/p>\nFor Cristobal, it was the culmination of five long \u2013 and sometimes tough \u2013 years at Miami. There have been a TON of ups and downs since he took over in 2022. Some have been his own doing. Taking a knee against Georgia Tech would’ve been smart, coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, he’s clearly got the program BACK. The U is back. We can say it now. It’s OK. We won’t jinx it. They are back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But buddy, don’t you DARE try to celebrate that with Mario before the final bell rings:<\/p>\n
Where do we stand on Mario Cristobal?<\/p>\n
My God. Look at that absolute psychopath. Terrifying. Honestly, I can’t get a read on Mario Cristobal. Is he just insane? Or, is he kind of a dick?<\/p>\n
Perhaps both. The answer is usually somewhere in the middle.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Take, for instance, this moment on stage after the win. I think he’s the man for this:<\/p>\n
Guy just wants his players on the stage with him instead of a bunch of middle-aged corporate muckity-mucks who don’t give a shit about your team. I respect that. I’d run through a wall for that coach.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other hand, he’s also kind of a dork and a little cutesy at the end of the day. Here’s Door No. 2:<\/p>\n
See, that’s annoying. Like, we get it, coach. We know. We gotcha. Mario’s whole thing during this playoff run has been to FREAK OUT when anyone dares say the U is back. But come on. It’s SVP. Let him finish the question before going on your little rant.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again, I get it. We get it. But enough. Relax for four seconds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anyway, Mario was on one last night. I reckon you sort of have to be to get to a national championship. This is the sort of attitude you need.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Miami hasn’t had it in decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They do now.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where do we stand on Mario? PublishedJanuary 9, 2026 8:03 AM EST\u2022UpdatedJanuary 9, 2026 12:28 PM EST FacebookTwitterEmailCopy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-397638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}