Miami Hurricanes executive director Dennis Smith joined Adam Breneman on his 'Next Up' podcast to talk about the Miami Hurricanes football program:
Adam: Your title on the director is executive director of football, you know, this role, some places call it a general manager, has really become like pretty popular in college football recently. You know, the GMs and the—your role, I joke, have kind of become like the celebrities in college football, and I've been interviewing them. So, to start, like, what is your role here at Miami? What does your day-to-day look like? I'm sure it's kind of a lot of everything.
Dennis Smith: It started, really, the advent of coming back to help coach bring great players back to the University of Miami, great players and people back to the University of Miami. And then, as this thing has really, really accelerated in college football with NIL, it's—the process changes, not yearly, it changes daily. And so, it's still player acquisition, number one. It's player retention. But it's really become about helping coach day-to-day manage the building as it ties into player retention and player acquisition. Trying to make sure you provide the best customer service experience for your players because they're the most important recruits that you—that you have. And then, the players that you're trying to bring into your program, and tying in your coaches, your staff, their families, so that it all works collectively together. Yeah. Yeah, there's probably a lot to do, right, on a day-to-day basis. You get in your car at night and you go home and you ask yourself, at least I do, like, man, what did I get accomplished today? I have got so much more that I need to get accomplished. But you learn that the pile is never going to go away. You just try to attack it each day.
Adam: Yeah. And you have a—we were talking about a close relationship with Coach Cristobal, and you were with him when he was the head coach at FIU, and you've been with him during the time at Miami now. What's special about that relationship that made you want to do this role at this time here at Miami?
Dennis Smith: So I actually met coach when he was the tight ends coach here. He came back from Rutgers in '04. So I was a student equipment manager here. And very quickly, he and I realized we shared a passion for recruiting, watching film, and trying to go out and recruit the best players and people to come to the University of Miami. And so we had that kind of shared vision about what UM needed to be. And so I was at Louisiana Tech University in 20—was that 2022, no, 2021, when he took the job from Oregon coming here. And there was, like I said, there was one guy that I would work with at the University of Miami because collectively, we saw the vision of what this place needs to be. And I wanted to help him live out his dream coming back to be the head coach at UM.
Adam: Since you guys first got here, when you got here with him, we were talking to the coach about it earlier today, just kind of the chaos of the first year and what you really walked into and where the roster was and the difficulty of that. What was that… what's your memory of that first few months of trying to rebuild this roster?
Dennis Smith: I've been on the opposite end of it, where coaches, you're part of a staff that's going out and the new staff comes in and they point to the mistakes of the old staff. You know, so many people have done a lot of good things in the last 20 years here, but I don't know that they've ever been able to put it together for a long period of time. There's been moments of success, but I think when we came in, we realized that I don't know that people appreciated what it was to be a Miami Hurricane. It was like they expected it. Everything was like they felt like it was… they deserved it. And it's really is a privilege each and every day to be a Miami Hurricane. I didn't play here, but I graduated from here. And the number that, I'll tell you where it hit me, the very first spring practice in 2022, I looked out and I watched us practice and I said, man, I just came from a place, Louisiana Tech, that we had four, five, six players in group of five football that were better than the players on the field here. And I asked myself, like, how does that happen? And so, you expect now, you look at the University of Miami, I watched spring practice in 2026, and fast forward five years, the team speed, the depth, the quality of talent and people has changed in those five years. And it's a credit to Coach and the staff.
Adam: You guys have been so good at building this place around the trenches. I mean, when I think of Mario Cristobal in Miami now, it is like the pinnacle of offensive and defensive line play in college football. And this place wasn't like that 10 years ago, even five years ago. And that really starts with, you know, a lot of your role in the evaluation, the recruiting, bringing those guys in here. How much of a focus has that been for you guys and how have you actually executed on that vision?
Dennis Smith: Well, you know that we're going to dedicate time, effort, energy into development, into the evaluation component. But it starts, the most important thing is the line of scrimmage. It's why we were able to win three games in the playoff, because we were better. We were better. We had better players. We were more developed. We were better prepared to win those games in December and January. But it's emphasized from the moment we evaluate a kid, identify a kid in high school, all the way through. I think the biggest thing, Adam, that coach, and I mention this often, coach is a relentless recruiter, but he does not get nearly enough credit for the emphasis that he has with our staff each and every day on the development piece. And there's no better area of development here in this program than at the line of scrimmage.
Adam: How have you guys balanced high school recruiting with the portal? Because that's kind of the great dynamic now in college football.
Dennis Smith: You know, when we started this thing five years ago, it was high school recruiting and the portal, because I don't know that there was a ton of talent that we wanted to retain. We're at a place now where you guys, it's player retention first. It's high school recruiting is right there, neck and neck second. And then the portal is third, okay? Because we believe in our ability to identify and develop. You start with the high school kid, because you're going to have them three to four years, three to five years. And then the portal is second. I think if you do a great job with player retention and the high school recruitment, you now use the portal to supplement. Yeah.
Adam: How have you guys, you know, from a NIL standpoint, revenue share standpoint, started to allocate where you're going to spend money? And I think there's, the NFL is a good model to look at, I think, from the outside looking in, but they don't have to deal with recruiting, right? There's a different factor. You're just picking the guys in the NFL. You can actually get them to come here. What's that dynamic been like for you? How do you actually allocate where you're going to spend and then how you're going to recruit the guys?
Dennis Smith: I always laugh. You know, now you see a lot of people taking elements of the NFL and bringing it into the college game. There are parts of the roster, you know, build model that come from the NFL. But I think because you have player retention, that's simply like free agency every day of the week, okay? And then when you go to the high school part of it, the high school recruitment process is not something you just turn on in November and say, we're going to recruit these high school kids. That's a two-year process. It happens so much faster now. So if you don't have the ability to manage those tasks simultaneously, you're going to get run over, okay? But you have to keep the players on your roster always have to be first.
Adam: Yeah. So is that when you're sitting down and have kind of the spreadsheets of like, hey, we're going to allocate this amount of money to quarterbacks, this amount of money to offensive line. Take me through how you actually decide like what those allocations are. I'm curious, like, is it, is it set, not set in stone, I'm sure it evolves, but is it something you go into a cycle saying, hey, we got a budget of this for revenue share for tight ends, but if there's an elite tight end, maybe we move some money around. Like, what's that process look like?
Dennis Smith: Absolutely. You always have to have a starting point and a plan. You know, I'm blessed. I'm not the smartest person, so I've got some really smart people that sit in a room and we talk through the plan that we have on paper. But I got to imagine similar to the NFL, if you have a player that you have a high draft grade, if you have a player that you value at a national championship level grade, don't, you're not going to last very long if you pass up on good players.
Adam: Yeah. What's been your favorite moment so far here at Miami since you, since you've been back?
Dennis Smith: You know, I actually, I talk about some of the dark moments in year one, and watching the fans walk out of the, you know, Hard Rock Stadium in the 2025 season, and seeing the success of our team and watching fans, you know, pile out into the parking lot after the game and watching, remembering what it was in 2022, and now what it is in 2025, just to see the evolution of the fan base. It's cool to watch little kids walking through South Florida with Malachi Tony jerseys and Cam Ward jerseys. I'll tell you what, I remember the third week I was here, we had a team from a local park, and I asked them to raise their hand if they grew up Miami Hurricane fans. And one kid raised his hand, and the coach from the park ball team started knocking kids on the head to raise their hand. And now, fast forward five years later, to see 200 kids flock to Malachi Tony, and to see 200 kids flock to Mark Fletcher, and to Ruben Bain and Akeem Mesidor, that right there tells the story in and of itself, because those are, that's the future. Those are future Canes.
Adam: Your title on the director is executive director of football, you know, this role, some places call it a general manager, has really become like pretty popular in college football recently. You know, the GMs and the—your role, I joke, have kind of become like the celebrities in college football, and I've been interviewing them. So, to start, like, what is your role here at Miami? What does your day-to-day look like? I'm sure it's kind of a lot of everything.
Dennis Smith: It started, really, the advent of coming back to help coach bring great players back to the University of Miami, great players and people back to the University of Miami. And then, as this thing has really, really accelerated in college football with NIL, it's—the process changes, not yearly, it changes daily. And so, it's still player acquisition, number one. It's player retention. But it's really become about helping coach day-to-day manage the building as it ties into player retention and player acquisition. Trying to make sure you provide the best customer service experience for your players because they're the most important recruits that you—that you have. And then, the players that you're trying to bring into your program, and tying in your coaches, your staff, their families, so that it all works collectively together. Yeah. Yeah, there's probably a lot to do, right, on a day-to-day basis. You get in your car at night and you go home and you ask yourself, at least I do, like, man, what did I get accomplished today? I have got so much more that I need to get accomplished. But you learn that the pile is never going to go away. You just try to attack it each day.
Adam: Yeah. And you have a—we were talking about a close relationship with Coach Cristobal, and you were with him when he was the head coach at FIU, and you've been with him during the time at Miami now. What's special about that relationship that made you want to do this role at this time here at Miami?
Dennis Smith: So I actually met coach when he was the tight ends coach here. He came back from Rutgers in '04. So I was a student equipment manager here. And very quickly, he and I realized we shared a passion for recruiting, watching film, and trying to go out and recruit the best players and people to come to the University of Miami. And so we had that kind of shared vision about what UM needed to be. And so I was at Louisiana Tech University in 20—was that 2022, no, 2021, when he took the job from Oregon coming here. And there was, like I said, there was one guy that I would work with at the University of Miami because collectively, we saw the vision of what this place needs to be. And I wanted to help him live out his dream coming back to be the head coach at UM.
Adam: Since you guys first got here, when you got here with him, we were talking to the coach about it earlier today, just kind of the chaos of the first year and what you really walked into and where the roster was and the difficulty of that. What was that… what's your memory of that first few months of trying to rebuild this roster?
Dennis Smith: I've been on the opposite end of it, where coaches, you're part of a staff that's going out and the new staff comes in and they point to the mistakes of the old staff. You know, so many people have done a lot of good things in the last 20 years here, but I don't know that they've ever been able to put it together for a long period of time. There's been moments of success, but I think when we came in, we realized that I don't know that people appreciated what it was to be a Miami Hurricane. It was like they expected it. Everything was like they felt like it was… they deserved it. And it's really is a privilege each and every day to be a Miami Hurricane. I didn't play here, but I graduated from here. And the number that, I'll tell you where it hit me, the very first spring practice in 2022, I looked out and I watched us practice and I said, man, I just came from a place, Louisiana Tech, that we had four, five, six players in group of five football that were better than the players on the field here. And I asked myself, like, how does that happen? And so, you expect now, you look at the University of Miami, I watched spring practice in 2026, and fast forward five years, the team speed, the depth, the quality of talent and people has changed in those five years. And it's a credit to Coach and the staff.
Adam: You guys have been so good at building this place around the trenches. I mean, when I think of Mario Cristobal in Miami now, it is like the pinnacle of offensive and defensive line play in college football. And this place wasn't like that 10 years ago, even five years ago. And that really starts with, you know, a lot of your role in the evaluation, the recruiting, bringing those guys in here. How much of a focus has that been for you guys and how have you actually executed on that vision?
Dennis Smith: Well, you know that we're going to dedicate time, effort, energy into development, into the evaluation component. But it starts, the most important thing is the line of scrimmage. It's why we were able to win three games in the playoff, because we were better. We were better. We had better players. We were more developed. We were better prepared to win those games in December and January. But it's emphasized from the moment we evaluate a kid, identify a kid in high school, all the way through. I think the biggest thing, Adam, that coach, and I mention this often, coach is a relentless recruiter, but he does not get nearly enough credit for the emphasis that he has with our staff each and every day on the development piece. And there's no better area of development here in this program than at the line of scrimmage.
Adam: How have you guys balanced high school recruiting with the portal? Because that's kind of the great dynamic now in college football.
Dennis Smith: You know, when we started this thing five years ago, it was high school recruiting and the portal, because I don't know that there was a ton of talent that we wanted to retain. We're at a place now where you guys, it's player retention first. It's high school recruiting is right there, neck and neck second. And then the portal is third, okay? Because we believe in our ability to identify and develop. You start with the high school kid, because you're going to have them three to four years, three to five years. And then the portal is second. I think if you do a great job with player retention and the high school recruitment, you now use the portal to supplement. Yeah.
Adam: How have you guys, you know, from a NIL standpoint, revenue share standpoint, started to allocate where you're going to spend money? And I think there's, the NFL is a good model to look at, I think, from the outside looking in, but they don't have to deal with recruiting, right? There's a different factor. You're just picking the guys in the NFL. You can actually get them to come here. What's that dynamic been like for you? How do you actually allocate where you're going to spend and then how you're going to recruit the guys?
Dennis Smith: I always laugh. You know, now you see a lot of people taking elements of the NFL and bringing it into the college game. There are parts of the roster, you know, build model that come from the NFL. But I think because you have player retention, that's simply like free agency every day of the week, okay? And then when you go to the high school part of it, the high school recruitment process is not something you just turn on in November and say, we're going to recruit these high school kids. That's a two-year process. It happens so much faster now. So if you don't have the ability to manage those tasks simultaneously, you're going to get run over, okay? But you have to keep the players on your roster always have to be first.
Adam: Yeah. So is that when you're sitting down and have kind of the spreadsheets of like, hey, we're going to allocate this amount of money to quarterbacks, this amount of money to offensive line. Take me through how you actually decide like what those allocations are. I'm curious, like, is it, is it set, not set in stone, I'm sure it evolves, but is it something you go into a cycle saying, hey, we got a budget of this for revenue share for tight ends, but if there's an elite tight end, maybe we move some money around. Like, what's that process look like?
Dennis Smith: Absolutely. You always have to have a starting point and a plan. You know, I'm blessed. I'm not the smartest person, so I've got some really smart people that sit in a room and we talk through the plan that we have on paper. But I got to imagine similar to the NFL, if you have a player that you have a high draft grade, if you have a player that you value at a national championship level grade, don't, you're not going to last very long if you pass up on good players.
Adam: Yeah. What's been your favorite moment so far here at Miami since you, since you've been back?
Dennis Smith: You know, I actually, I talk about some of the dark moments in year one, and watching the fans walk out of the, you know, Hard Rock Stadium in the 2025 season, and seeing the success of our team and watching fans, you know, pile out into the parking lot after the game and watching, remembering what it was in 2022, and now what it is in 2025, just to see the evolution of the fan base. It's cool to watch little kids walking through South Florida with Malachi Tony jerseys and Cam Ward jerseys. I'll tell you what, I remember the third week I was here, we had a team from a local park, and I asked them to raise their hand if they grew up Miami Hurricane fans. And one kid raised his hand, and the coach from the park ball team started knocking kids on the head to raise their hand. And now, fast forward five years later, to see 200 kids flock to Malachi Tony, and to see 200 kids flock to Mark Fletcher, and to Ruben Bain and Akeem Mesidor, that right there tells the story in and of itself, because those are, that's the future. Those are future Canes.
