Local coaches fired up about Cristobal hire
Dameon Jones — the coach at Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna, which boasts four blue-chip recruits on its current roster and has had six others in the past four recruiting cycles — was busy getting ready for practice Monday and hadn’t heard the official word about Mario Cristobal landing with the Miami Hurricanes until close to an hour after it officially happened.
Once he found out the news, he lit up.
“That’s my guy,” said Jones, who has guided the Lions to three state championships in the past four years and will coach them in another Class 3A title game Friday in Tallahassee. “I’ve known him for a minute.”
It was part of a nearuniform reaction from coaches across South Florida.
“He’s put in decades of work like that where he’s built genuine relationships with people,” said Davie Western coach Adam Ratkevich, who has multiple four-star prospects on his roster.
“I think it’s a great hire,” said Miami Killian coach Derrick Gibson, who has two of Florida’s top 50 players for the
Class of 2023.
“I’m confident he’ll establish the desired culture conducive to bringing the Hurricanes back,” Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas coach Roger Harriott said in a text message while busy preparing his Raiders for a third consecutive state title game.
For the most part, coaches made sure to praise former coach Manny Diaz, who did put together a top-15 Class of 2021, but also looked forward to see what new heights Cristobal can reach at Miami.
“I think this move keeps a lot of those kids there that’s there now and it’s going to get more kids to come,” said Jones, who has three former players on scholarship with the Hurricanes. “I just feel like Mario’s going to take it to a whole other level with having that background that he had and that Alabama background, that winning pedigree.”
MARIO CRISTOBAL’S ‘HOLLYWOOD’ STORY
“It’s like a movie script, right?” Ratkevich offered Monday, and it’s a compelling case — even though it will need some wins to get some studio to option it.
Still, the pieces are mostly there.
“Local Cuban-American guy, hard worker, him and his brother — studs at UM and at Columbus, and he goes off and does his thing. And now he becomes extremely successful, and has a chance to come back and right the ship,” Ratkevich said.
“You could probably do a Hollywood production on something like that.”
The promise is those longstanding ties in the Miami football community will turn into recruiting excellence and maybe — just maybe — let the Hurricanes compete with Alabama, Georgia and anyone else that wants to pillage South Florida for elite talent.
Some of the region’s most prominent coaches have known Cristobal since long before he was the coach at Oregon or even Alabama’s offensive line coach.
Ratkevich first met Cristobal when Cristobal was a graduate assistant for the Hurricanes and they both worked lineman camps together. Jones got to know Cristobal when Cristobal was Miami’s offensive line coach and he sent several players to play for Cristobal when he was coach at FIU. Miami Central coach Roland Smith, who has more state titles than anyone else in South Florida, was actually briefly a teammate of Cristobal’s with the Hurricanes and has been coaching in high school during every step of Cristobal’s coaching career.
“He’s a tireless recruiter,” Smith said. “I can recall when he was at FIU, even Rutgers and now at Oregon that he’s tireless. He’s the guy that seals the deal.”
CRISTOBAL EXCELS AS RECRUITER
Recruiting isn’t the same as coaching. A coach can draw up the perfect game plan, call the perfect play at the perfect moment, put his players in the ideal situation to execute and, in recruiting, a 17-year-old kid can still choose to go somewhere else for reasons beyond any coach’s control.
It doesn’t mean there aren’t any similarities, though, and the same traits that make Cristobal a good coach also make him a good recruiter.
“It’s because of the work. You’re going to get what you put into it,”
Jones said. “He’s one of them guys that puts stuff in, and nothing against Manny [Diaz], but it’s different when you coach there, play there, you’re from here, and you have done it at different levels and as a recruiter. I don’t think Manny was a recruiter. He had staff around them to be a recruiter.”
In each of his three full recruiting cycles with the Ducks, Cristobal put together a top-11 class, including the No. 6 class in 2021. When he was the Crimson Tide’s offensive line coach, Cristobal was the primary recruiter for six five-star commitments, including Deerfield Beach’s Jerry Jeudy and Monarch’s Calvin Ridley.
“I think guys will want to come play for Miami now,” Gibson said. “I’m not saying they didn’t want to come when Manny was there, but you get a splash hire like this, it’s going to bring excitement to the city.”
Said Ratkevich: “He brings that gravitas of being a recruiting guru to Miami, but it’s something that comes out of hard work and being a genuine character guy.”
Cristobal understands the primary mission —
“It’s time to make sure that talent stays home,” he said — and he has the tool set to make it happen.
Those relationships — the ones he has had since way before he was a household name — give him local roots unlike any other college football coach. His personality is magnetic and his work ethic, coaches said, turns it all into results.
“It’s not going to be through a tweet or a proclamation or anything of that nature,” Cristobal said. “You’ve got to go grind and when I say grind it’s not just aimless effort and enthusiasm.”
Said Ratkevich: “If you were any program in the country, you’d be lucky to get Mario Cristobal as a head coach, but this is obviously the perfect place and I know it’s something that he’s always wanted, too. ... It’s kind of a match made in heaven, and I think it’ll be extremely positive for UM and South Florida football in general.”
David Wilson: 305-376-3406, @DBWilson2