Mario Cristobal offers no discernable advantage

Mario in December 2018 was mostly just a Miami guy and a recruiter.

Mario in 2021 is the coach of a Top 5 team, with a Top 5 finish on the resume and two conference titles.

It’s a different situation now. If we get Mario, the national reaction will be “How did they pull that off?”
I used to be vehemently anti-Mario, but the argument just isn't there now. He won't come here unless he's being given the resources he needs to succeed and he's sculpted a career path that if nothing else must have taught him what to ask for.
 
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Just conduct a proper search please.
At a minimum, this is the least they could do. When you look back at the Manny hire you wonder how you could make a million dollar decision so quickly without conducting any other interviews.

And the person you hired had never done the job before. Like ever.

At the end of the day we fans don’t get paid to make those decisions so don’t make it based on what fans want.

Just make the right hire. I’m tired of winning the off season. I need decisive Ws when we play teams that are consistently in the 40s in recruiting.

Like the Dolphins selecting Tua instead of Herbert because of fans when all the metrics said Herbert was better for the NFL. Yes fans would’ve been upset but once the season started we would’ve immediately shut up once we saw the production.
 
In all honesty, the biggest negative that keeps popping in my head with Mario is Justin F'ing Herbert.

I mean, NOW everyone loves Herbert. God knows that in the days leading up to the NFL draft, EVERYONE was questioning how good he was. Then he gets to the NFL and balls out and you're left wondering....what the **** was Mario and staff doing to NOT extract that talent and maximize it.

That Oregon team had what has turned out to be a franchise NFL QB and a VERY GOOD offensive line. It's fair to ask questions about Mario not extracting maximum output from great players.

BUT.....at least he GETS those great players. He would kill it down here in recruiting. He'd represent a SIGNIFICANTLY better HC than anything we've had here since Butch. He's actually pretty **** similar to young Butch if you really break it down. Neither one is/was a gameday savant.
Bull F’ing ****.

Herbert averaged 3,300 yards and a 30-6 TD-INT ratio his junior and senior seasons at Oregon. He didn’t have a receiving corp of first round picks like Burrow, Tua, and Mac Jones, or a supporting cast like Lawrence or Fields. So he didn’t put up basketball numbers.

He was the SIXTH overall pick. NO ONE was questioning him. GMs weren’t. Scouts weren’t. Herbert was not a surprise pick. He wasn’t a reach. Burrow went first, deservedly. Washington took an elite DE #2, and the Giants and Lions had QBs (they thought). The Fins then errored and picked Tua fifth over Herbert.

That Herbert could walk into the NFL and ball out without a preseason shows how good and well coached he was.
 
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Problem with the CEO type is that they continuously have to make good coordinator hires year in and year out. I've wanted one of those offensive type guys around where no matter what you're getting one side of the ball taken care of. In a sport where you need a well functioning QB to win it all, ill take the offensive side over the defense.
 
He’s also lost to Cal, Washington St and Stanford the last two years and consistently been in late 4th quarter dogfights against some really bad teams.
How does his job performance compare to Manny’s and how does it compare to anyone we’d have a reasonable chance of getting over that same 2 year time period?
 
No doubt, the Pac12 stinks and is getting worse.

I hope this Utah beats Oregon this week and this thread gets bumped. Hard to imagine any scenario where Oregon is in the playoff and he comes here.
So if he loses a game he should win and isn’t in the top 5 anymore, then what is the discernible advantage being asked about?

Seems like want Mario because he’s Miami Mario and one track focus which we claim to absolutely hate about Miami hiring process.
 
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I know a majority of this board has an unhealthy obsession with bringing alumni home to save the program, but Mario is not what we need. He offers no tangible advantage for this program.

I hear everybody say, he'll fix the OL like he's the only person in the country that can recruit good o-linemen. The truth is, people say that about him because that's all he truly brings to the table. He has no system that

Fans will also talk about his recruiting. It's true; he's killing it right now, but we've seen time and time again that you need more than good players to win games. We've seen watched Miami for over a decade continually lose to lesser talented teams because of coaching ineptitude. Talent only gets you so far. L to Stanford this year, L's to Oregon State and Cal last year. Also, lets face it, he's taking advantage of an extremely down conference right now--USC, UCLA and Washington are all shells of themselves and he's feasting on the west coast. That wouldn't happen recruiting the southeast. He'd have to go up against Bama, UGA, Clemson, Ohio State etc. for recruits.

How about discipline? A hard-nosed guy like Mario must have a disciplined team. Nope. Oregon's currently sitting at 114th in the country in penalty yards per game--exactly one spot in front of your Miami Hurricanes.

How about offense? Mario has to have great offenses, right? Him being an offensive guy and all. 32nd ranked offense in the nation. For reference Miami is ranked 28th. His offense isn't bad, but it's consistently been underwhelming. The narrative regarding Justin Herbert and his time at Oregon was that the offense failed him. He was used incorrectly and it failed to showcase his talents. Mario has no offensive system so he'd need to make the correct hire there. We'd also have to hope he doesn't hamstring that OC either by playing a conservative style of football.

Mario would need the perfect OC and DC hires to succeed because he offers no schematic advantage on either side of the ball. He's your classic CEO type head coach. Think about all the top coaches in the country right now. All of them have a calling card on one side of the ball or the other. Saban on D, Kirby on D, Day on offense, Riley on offense, Gundy on offense etc. I could go on and on. Mario is not guru on either side of the ball which means he'd need big money coordinators to succeed here, and that scares me. That's why I'm all in on guys like Lane Kiffin or Hugh Freeze. At least you know with them one side of the ball will be taken care of.
We don’t need another guy with a system. The problem with system guys is they won’t let go of their system. They’ll ignore personnel and just keep insisting on running their system. If you don’t have one you can fire you’re OC/DC when they don’t get the job done. Our coaches mostly fire the coordinator but insist the next guy run the same system. So I’d say that’s actually a plus for Mario.
 
How does his job performance compare to Manny’s and how does it compare to anyone we’d have a reasonable chance of getting over that same 2 year time period?
Manny is too low a bar. Would Oregon beat Ole Miss head to head this week? I don’t believe so.

The question still keeps coming back to the thought Mario needs help on both sides of the ball and other potential coaches don’t. Like a Lane or Freeze example
 
Problem with the CEO type is that they continuously have to make good coordinator hires year in and year out. I've wanted one of those offensive type guys around where no matter what you're getting one side of the ball taken care of. In a sport where you need a well functioning QB to win it all, ill take the offensive side over the defense.
The problem with that being they spend all week focusing on their side of the ball and other things fall apart. There's only so many hours in the week.
 
So if he loses a game he should win and isn’t in the top 5 anymore, than what is the discernible advantage being asked about?

Seems like want Mario because he’s Miami Mario and one track focus which we claim to absolutely hate about Miami hiring process.
I don’t have a horse in this race, but Mario has done more at a large program than Manny, al, or randy. He’s recruiting better than we do and winning more than we do. Yes, the PAC is weak, but weaker than the coastal? Obviously not.
 
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Mario offers a gigantic discernible advantage. Probably the single biggest discernible advantage.

He can recruit his ******* balls off. He can evaluate and land elite talent. It is the singular most important aspect of a head coach in college football. Yes, we’ve done less with more forever here. But we’ve hired complete losers for Head Coaches and lost out on the vast, vast, vast majority of the elite local talent. Y’all really think UGA is so good this year because of Kirby’s defensive specialty?? LMAOOOOOO. Sorry to break it to you guys, it’s the 1700 five-stars he has.

You guys realize that a kid had more TFLs on Saturday against us than any player in the history of the Miami/FSU rivalry? His name is Jermaine Johnson. He was arguably the single best player on the football field. Wanna know why he’s at FSU? Let this one sink in. HE COULDN’T EVEN GET ON THE FIELD AT UGA. In a Miami/FSU game, the game that used to have the MOST talent in the country, the best player was a kid who couldn’t even sniff the field at UGA. But yeah, it’s Kirby’s superior scheme LOL. We need an elite X’s and O’s guy immediately.
I don’t think anyone has ever thought of Kirby as having a superior scheme, it’s been pretty well known that Kirby is a complete Goober who has essentially been giving a Golden ticket to buy a National championship because they have 100 5-star athletes.

UGA has lead the nation in recruiting spending since Kirby got there, they’re spending $3.5mill a year in recruiting budget & have just copied Bama’s model of flooding the system with cash until they yield desired results.

Mario is a very good recruiter in his own right, but Miami for sure AF ain’t never gonna spend even half as much as UGA does in recruiting, so will the expectation for Mario be top 5 classes even without having the financial support to back him?

Are yall essentially saying he can out recruit elite programs even without the money?
If so, then bring him here now lol
 
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That’s true. I don’t deny that he’s a good coach.

But Oregon’s road to the CFP is as easy as can be, just look at the QB’s in that conference, they don’t play any legit QB’s at all. Which means they can’t lose another game for the rest of the season.

Homie, look at the road to the CFP this year in the ACC. The league is so bad we're not even going to get a team in, or even close to it. I don't think Mario is the 2nd coming of Christ, he's got some warts as a gameday coach, but honestly, who doesn't? What coach that we can possibly get is coming devoid of any concerns? They don't exist outside of places like Tuscaloosa.

Mario has a HIGH floor, IMO. You know he's going to recruit, at worst, very well. You know we're going to be competent. You know we're going to beat the vast majority of the teams we're supposed to beat. You know we're going to be competitive. Can he be a good enough football coach to win a championship? I don't know. But the things I just listed, I am 100.0% confident in. The guy has experience, he's seen what it takes to win at the highest level both as a player and a coach, he's proven to be able to win games vs good teams (and lose them to bad ones, to be fair), but for going on 20 years we've been a literal joke. Not just an average team. A joke. An undisciplined, underperfoming, non-developing laughing stock. I'm tired of it. Sure, if his track record remains the same as it's been, we might be in a dogfight with a UVA or a Wake in October. But we're in a dogfight every **** week in this garbage *** league. And we have been FOREVER since we joined it. I just want to be competent. I want to be tough. I want to not watch our kids talk **** like this is 1987 and then get blown out of buildings, like we've seen in places like ******* Manhattan, Kansas for Christ's sake. Is he the end-all, best possible candidate we can ever get? I don't know, maybe not. But if somehow we land him, it's a homerun. Period. It's an absolute ****-shot, ****-missile of a homerun to dead center for this program. I'm trying to see everyone's opinion here and be level-headed, but for the life of me, I can't see how anyone can disagree with that.
 
Yea Mario is a recruiter but my question with him is the same as @Liberty City El .....will he be able to recruit here vs bama OSU and Clemson? It's easier at OU than here at UM
This concerns me. Back in my single days I could pull the 1 hot chick at band camp, but drop me in a NY Night Club, and I’d have to get scrappy and wouldn’t always come out with a W.

Seriously though, it’s a knife fight for SFL talent. Different game than in the Northwest. I believe though if we put a good product on the field, we will get our share. I just don’t think the “Mario will lock it down” thing is going to happen. Whoever we hire is going to have to build relationships early, evaluate way better than we have, make that offer mean something, and continue to recruit nationally.
 
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