Feldman is close to Mario - went to school with him and has been friends for years. He says that he doesn't think Mario knows what Mario wants to do. He doesn't see Mario as one of the college coaches who ultimately goes to the NFL; coaches like Ryan Day and Lincoln Riley are the type of coaches he sees doing that down the road.
Feldman believes that there are two schools Oregon should worry about with regard to Cristobol: USC and Miami.
Feldman also recognizes that Miami could be categorized as Cristobol's dream job and it would be interesting to see what he would do if Miami really pushes to hire him.
“In my mind, just knowing Mario—and I went to school with him, so I’ve known him a long time—like USC can pay Mario a lot more than Miami can, but Miami is home. His brother Lou is a Miami-Dade police officer and the family is entrenched there in that culture,” Feldman said.
“I was with [Mario] when they were playing their bowl game against Michigan State basically when the Miami job came open and they scrambled to bring Manny Diaz back to be the head coach,” Feldman said. “They couldn’t have afforded Mario’s buyout at that point, which was somewhere between $11M-$12M and I am not sure they can afford it now at $9M, so it may be a non-starter at that point.”
“I know Mario thinks he has a really good team now and he thinks they will be even better in 2022 and 2023,”
“If he wants to be the Miami head coach, it is going to be a rebuilding job no matter what,”
“The only thing I do wonder about is this may be the last realistic time that if he wants to be the coach at Miami "