CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Mario Cristobal doesn’t want to hear any of the incessant “The U Is Back” stuff.
Yes, the Miami Hurricanes are in the College Football Playoff semifinals after being given almost no chance of making the 12-team field after a pair of losses around the midseason point and hearing plenty of pundits saying they don’t belong. Yes, they’ve tied a school record with 12 wins. Yes, they’re two wins from what would be their first national championship since the 2001 season — and one victory away a title-game appearance that would just happen to come on their home field.
Save it, at least around Cristobal. None of those words matter to him right now. Saturday was just another day in Coral Gables, which is consistent with what he’s been preaching since he returned to his alma mater four seasons ago. Miami (12-2, No. 10 CFP) takes on Mississippi (13-1, No. 6 CFP) in the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday night in Glendale, Arizona.
“There aren’t really distractions. You create your own distractions,” Cristobal said Saturday. “And I think the mentality — the DNA of our guys as it gets stronger and better, as our older guys realize that it’s their time, it’s their legacy and that they have to take control of the locker room and how we think and how we go about things — I think all that has improved in a dramatic fashion.
“We hammer it every single day and so far, we feel like we’re getting a pretty good result. But you get on it, and you stay on it. I think if you come off it for a second, you’re going to leave a window open and you’re going to let a rat in there.”
Ah, the rat.
He means rat poison, a term his old boss — former Alabama coach Nick Saban — used at times in the final years of his coaching career. Rat poison, in Saban-speak, is what is detrimental to teams that start believing their hype and losing focus on the controllables like working as hard as possible every day.
And every coach left in the race for this CFP title knows exactly what Cristobal means — since they all worked for Saban. Cristobal worked under Saban at Alabama from 2013 through 2016. Ole Miss coach Pete Golding was with Saban for five seasons, from 2018 through 2022. Oregon coach Dan Lanning was a graduate assistant on Saban’s staff in 2015. And Indiana coach Curt Cignetti did his time under Saban from 2007 through 2011.
All four of those coaches left Alabama with at least one national title from their time with the Crimson Tide. They have a chance to win their own now.
“I think most people who went through and were fortunate enough to be around coach Saban understand, number one, (the) lifeblood of the program is recruiting,” Golding said Saturday. “And then you’ve got to have sound schemes on both sides. You want to keep stability within those schemes for the development of players. And there’s a toughness component, a competitive character component to hold these guys accountable and hold them to a high standard. And I think that’s pretty consistent with whoever is playing right now.”
It’s certainly a tie that binds Cristobal and Golding going into this CFP semifinal.
There are a few of those linking the Hurricanes and the Rebels: the Saban ties, expectations, the juggling act that comes with handling the transfer portal being open and prepping for a CFP semifinal simultaneously, even the aftereffects of getting into the tournament field after being among the teams that just missed the 12-team cut last year.
And Ole Miss is still dealing with the fallout from losing coach Lane Kiffin to LSU and the will-they-or-won’t-they questions about assistant coaches who — at some point — will be following him to Baton Rouge. Some came back for Ole Miss’ win over Georgia in the CFP quarterfinal; whether they’ll all be at the Fiesta Bowl is still a bit of a mystery.
Again, Cristobal sees it all as a distraction, and he insists that distractions — even the Ole Miss staff situation — must be ignored.
“It has zero impact on our preparation, and I think it’d be safe to say that it doesn’t impact their preparation as well,” Cristobal said. “They’re a great football team with great coaches that are in place, and they’re preparing just as hard for this as they have for any game.”
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