Mario Cristobal is not into wearing jewelry. He doesn’t have any on, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plenty of shiny, sparkling things.
In Cristobal’s office at Miami, there are at least a dozen rings on display. These include rings from his time as a player for the Hurricanes, rings from when he was an assistant coach under Nick Saban at Alabama, and rings from his coaching days at Oregon.
He’s one of only nine current head coaches with multiple conference titles at what used to be called the Power Five level, having led Oregon to two Pac-12 championships before returning to Miami.
He won’t wear the next ring he earns, either. But he really wants it.
“It’s an unbelievable, addicting feeling that you crave every second while you work,” Cristobal said about those ring-worthy victories. “Not necessarily because of the actual hardware, because I don’t wear any. It’s because of the moments, the accomplishments, the goal setting, the benchmarks that just keep the program on a certain trajectory.”
Miami hasn’t had that kind of moment yet under Cristobal. As he starts his third year as the Hurricanes’ coach, he believes the program is getting closer.
The Hurricanes open the season ranked No. 19 in the AP Top 25, were picked third in the Atlantic Coast Conference’s preseason poll, have the league’s preseason player of the year in transfer quarterback Cam Ward, and have a roster that has been greatly improved by recruiting successes since Cristobal returned to his alma mater.
Now, it’s time to put everything together.
“At our place we say how you do anything is how you do everything,” Cristobal said. “Whether it be the classroom, the community, how you are at home with your family, how you are in the community with people, how you are in a locker room, on the road, how you are when things are going well or when they’re not going so well and you face adversity. Greatness is being the absolute best you can be all the time. It’s a way of life.”
The rings prove he’s right. He turned around the programs at FIU and Oregon, and he believes he is doing the same at Miami.
“We have been working really hard to get to a point where our expectations for ourselves continue to grow,” Cristobal said. “We want those. We welcome those.”
